


Carnivorous

by Teakay



Series: Hope is no more behind a closed door [1]
Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Breathplay, Canonical Character Death, Electric Torture, F/M, Gang Rape, M/M, Multi, Non-Canonical Character Survival, Pegging, Rape By Proxy, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 01:01:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teakay/pseuds/Teakay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The executions are faked, as Leon Kuwata discovers when he wakes up with broken limbs and two years of restored memories. Junko Enoshima is happy to rub this in his face as he struggles to go about the business of survival in the hidden rooms of Hope's Peak where the despair is on another level.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for the kink meme to fill two different prompts. The first (http://superhighschoollevelsmut.dreamwidth.org/558.html?thread=340782): "Anyone/Leon, total domination. Can be non-con or consensual. Toys (especially vibrators) are highly encouraged!" The original version was posted here, since Leon is definitely the central character. 
> 
> The second (http://superhighschoollevelsmut.dreamwidth.org/558.html?thread=208174): "The executions were fake. The murderers were left bloodied, battered, bruised, burned and broken, but alive. Bearing physical and mental scars, only made worse as Monokuma then forced them to watch the mutual killing game continue. All the other deaths, though? The murders and suicide and such...? Those were all real. No coming back from any of that."
> 
> If you didn't guess already: spoilers galore. 
> 
> Some revision from original meme posts. Working mainly off the Something Awful translation by Orenronen, with gift info from the Parbles translation on Tumblr. Using canon from the game and the tie-in manga. So Leon is guilty of aggravated dumbassery and possibly manslaughter but didn't break down the door in order to commit murder.
> 
> The time between killings is stretched out from canon. There's likely still some medical fail regarding Leon's recovery time, but then again canon is futuristic enough to include precision amnesia, so please give me some allowances here. The outside world is not quite as broken as claimed. 
> 
> Age calculation: Japanese high school usually doesn't include ninth grade. Leon, at least, spent a while at a regular high school, and Naegi and Sayaka knew each other in junior high and don't act like it was only a few weeks ago, so add another year onto that. The age cutoff is generally the first day of school. By this estimate, all the students are at least sixteen when they enter Hope's Peak and eighteen by the time the game starts, though they think they're still two years younger. Which is a convoluted explanation for why there is no underage warning. There's mention of underage sex, but none of it onscreen.
> 
> Further content notes: All tagged relationships are nonconsensual on the part of everyone except Junko, aside from hints at past Leon/Sayaka. More combinations implied offscreen. Possible kinks/squicks that didn't seem to get enough coverage to warrant a tag include forced piercing and enemas. Mention of sexual harassment/exploitation of a minor. Talk of a canonical false accusation of sexual assault. Also, Little Black Sambo references. Opinions expressed that are not shared by the author, including transphobia, misogyny, and attempts to shrug off rape. If I've neglected a trigger please let me know.

With his limbs released, with no strength left to claw at his throat or raise his head or even to writhe like a worm on a hook as brain cells began to die, Leon Kuwata dangled slack on the remaining chain around his neck and when his gaze landed on the blood-spattered ball-strewn ground he saw blue blue skies. 

Even now he couldn't imagine the sky without something blocking his way. A window, glass and white-painted wood. A classroom window, one he'd stared out so many times as lectures buzzed over his head. He imagined himself leaning forward, one arm with the elbow on the desk and the hand propping up his chin. His other hand, at his side, twitched to catch a paper airplane thrown from behind. He unfolded it by touch, under the desk, and at the right moment laid it out in the open and pretended to take notes on it. 

The characters blurred but he knew the gist. Meet up X at Y time, let's party at Z. No signature – he knew who it was and if it was intercepted it'd just be evidence. 

( _Evidence –_ )

He moved the same hand out into the narrow aisle and used it to signal _Yeah_ to – he knew who it was. Who was it?

Oowada. Yeah, Oowada, who sat even further back than Leon. That made sense. Except it didn't. 

What didn't make sense either was Fujisaki sitting in front of him. She'd brought her smallest netbook to class (the imaginary world filled in: to his disappointment, she was unwilling to provide him with another distraction by streaming video or playing games on Facebook after Leon's smartphone had been confiscated for the fifth time) and her head with its fine brown hair was lowered and her thin fingers typed industriously. But as he put this into words in his head, his mind bounced and skittered off _she_ and _her_ for reasons that eluded him when he reached and tried to catch them. 

In front of Fujisaki, in the front row, sat Ishimaru. And to Ishimaru's side sat – sat Maizono, her hair straight down her equally-straight back, a fancy barrette gleaming on the side of her head. Next to Maizono, Enoshima, her pigtails unmistakable. And all around the room all of the others he'd never shared a class with even if he'd looked them up on the Internet like everyone else probably had. 

Except – 

The window opened and now it was blue skies and a baseball diamond and he pitched and Asahina swung and hit it over the fence and shrieked with delight and looked at him smiling, not like she had when he told her he didn't give a shit about the game and she'd looked at him like he'd whipped it out and pissed on home plate. Except he hadn't because he remembered pictures of the diamond in the Academy brochure, with all the other state-of-the-art sports shit, and he hadn't seen it once in person let alone stepped on it.

Except – 

For one moment it all made sense, too much sense, and he struggled to even struggle, to reach out to the horrified faces on the other side of the mesh, to say again wait no listen to me help me you have to understand – 

_I don't want to die I don't I don't I don't_ –

***

Like a doll –

_(I'm not a doll, Maizono said)_

_(She'd said it twice, that he'd heard)_

_(She fell back, the two of them staring at the knife in her gut. She slumped against the wall still and cold)_

_(He might do as badly at languages as he did with every other subject but he knew what his own name looked like. He learned to spell it with an L so it would look stylish and Western. Maybe if he'd dared to look closer –)_  
  
Like a doll stuffed back in the toy box. When he was awake enough to know it was dark beyond his two swollen eyes he lay in the dark and listened to the distant humming and waited for the lid to open. 

Somewhere far away, he knew, everything still hurt. But his chest wasn't on fire and his limbs didn't shriek. This far away when everything hurt it was almost as if it turned over so nothing hurt at all. 

Far away he felt other things. The thing covering his nose and mouth, stuck to his face. Sometimes when he woke up and it was still there it scared him until he remembered he was still breathing. He felt the familiar weight on his collarbone, the padlock necklace he bought the spring break before Hope's Peak because it made him feel like Sid Vicious. He felt something up his dick, some kind of pressure from inside, which was weird but ranked far below what was left of the pain. Something else stuck in one hand, and that hurt but not very much at all. He felt things that wrapped him and held him still and he felt air move on patches of bare skin and he felt sheets against his back. 

He thought he might remember losing his clothes. Might remember the shears going _snick_ down his chest, down one leg and the other. Might remember the horrible yin-yang face, an even more fucked up Monobear face, floating above. 

He could move his fingers and toes and far away he felt the pain go up when he did. When he tried moving his arms and legs as far as he could make himself far away he heard chains rattle.

Sometimes as time slid by and sweat dried he started to feel dirty but once he slept and woke up again he'd be fine. 

Sometimes when he could get his thoughts together he started to really wonder. Maybe the police finally busted in like Asahina said they would, rescued everyone (maybe they knew what he'd done and that was why he was chained up in the dark). Maybe he'd been hit by a bus on the way to Hope's Peak and the whole thing had been a crazy dream while he was in the operating room. Maybe he'd been hit by a bus while out on the town or flown high as a jet while experimenting in the greenhouse and everything that happened in the last year had been a dream.

The whole last year. Fuck. 

When he tried he could remember the headmaster, the real human headmaster, whose name was Kirigiri (wait, what). He could remember sitting in the headmaster's office in front of the headmaster's desk. For once he wasn't being gone on at about potential. The headmaster had promised something. He'd said something about it being recorded. For some reason, Leon remembered, this once he'd agreed with the old bastard. Was there a chance he could find it and play it back and know exactly what they'd been saying? 

The DVD with his name on it showed the front door of his house gaping open and stray cats making themselves at home in the foyer, kittens playing with his mother's favorite pair of glitzy heels. He didn't remember seeing that before but now he remembered a year ago he'd tried to call home with the phone he had then. No reception. He remembered saying _fuckfuckfuck_ , remembered he stopped pretending to hate his parents (he hadn't _known_ he was pretending, not really, not until he stopped). He remembered all the crying around the school, those first days.

***

He woke up with his face wet and tears in his ears. It was so much harder now to breathe maybe because that thing was off his face and out of his nose maybe it was a hospital thing but he did his best in-out-in-out like after a sprint around the bases. After a home run he always spent a while doubled over gasping clutching at the stitch in his side and he never got sympathy after the cheering was over: well, Kuwata, if you practiced, if you built up your stamina...

Another deep breath and he ventured a shout. "Hey! Hey! Anyone there?"

Zip zilch nada. Deep breath. "Hello? Hey! The hell's going on?"

His head was clearer, he thought, the fog was going away, but he didn't want to see what was behind it. Things like the two Kirigiris and the iron plates going over the windows and a series of friendship bracelets marching up Maizono's left forearm revealed when she pulled back the sleeve of her brown uniform jacket and himself, his own voice, saying yes, he – 

It was long enough after his last yell into the dark that the electricity took him completely by surprise. He was surprised even to hear himself scream as it snapped out from his groin and up to his chest and down his immobilized legs to his toes. Everything moved far as it would go his back arched his head back his fists clenched his feet pointed. He landed gasping again one two three four – and again. And again. 

He soon gave up trying to keep count, to anticipate; if there was a pattern it was a math thing he'd never wrapped his brain around. He lay in dread in the dark and waited and tried to think in short bursts less likely to be interrupted but most of the time all he could think about was when was it coming again and he was tense even before the next shock sent his body taut. 

Then he realized that after so long the pain was coming back in like the tide. He'd been drugged, he got that now, and the last dose was wearing off with nothing to replace it. Now when the current ripped through it left muscle and bone screaming in its wake. His own screams became louder, then hoarser. Not long after that he began to cry again. Then he started to beg.

It was as humiliating and useless as it had been in the courtroom but he couldn't help it; the words poured out. He didn't know if it was better or worse that he could no longer see Monobear's smirk or the ring of closed faces, faces that he remembered now had smiled at him and beside him for _two. Whole. Years_. 

– _please please please please it hurts please don't please it hurts hurts so bad please stop please don't please help me –_

_– anything I'll do anything please stop don't have to do this I'll do whatever you want anything anything –_

***

When a slap across the face woke him up nothing had gotten any better.

The lights were on, he thought, but that made barely any difference with the cloth tight over his eyes. His arms were pulled higher, reaching over his head. Something moved above him, shifted the mattress on either side of him. And above him someone spoke, a voice he should know but didn't want to. "Do you really mean it, Kuwata-kun? Anything?"

He opened his mouth and managed to croak something in the affirmative. He was very thirsty. 

"Get me off," said the girl who sounded exactly like Junko Enoshima, "and then we can talk." He felt her warmth brush against his face and for a few seconds he had no idea in the world what she wanted. 

Then he discovered the electroshock was still on. On a lower level, at least, so it only gave him a small convulsion; he muffled his yelp but she laughed all the same even if she also jerked atop him. This once the adrenaline helped him as he remembered with desperation the classroom diagrams, the dirty magazines, the bragging and the suggestive gestures with cans of beer. He raised his throbbing head and put out his tongue. This was how Leon Kuwata finally lost his virginity. 

When he'd fantasized about it, late at night reaching down after a date went sour or awkward, he hadn't thought of it as anything sacred. He'd imagined behind the bleachers, or backstage after a musical debut that knocked off socks and panties. He'd imagined that he'd know exactly what to do, leave them thinking he'd done it ten thousand times before. Act like there'd never _been_ a first time. 

After a too-long while when he thought he was at his lowest he heard his own gulping choking sobs and he found there was lower to go. She liked that; he heard her laughing again as she lowered herself further, pressing his head down and his face full of her. She was wet now and he tried to listen for any other sound she made because if he could figure this out it would be over faster.

He figured out enough that it was over and she was shuddering and whooping atop him before he could pass out again. As she climbed off him she took the blindfold with her. He spent a few seconds squinting into the mercifully dimmed light. He turned his head and could see her standing at the bedside, in front of a humming machine trailing wires and tubes that led back to him. A few seconds more and he could make out enough of her face to whisper, dumbly, "It's you."

Junko Enoshima stood posed for some unseen camera, laughing, and said, "It's me all right." 

Leon waited for her to say something else but for the moment she was satisfied once she stopped laughing to leer down at him in silence. Eventually he managed to say something else obvious. "You're alive."

"Naturally." Her grin widened; her voice took on a perverse melodic lift. "I don't know what kind of trash you've been reading but ghosts don't exist!"

But the girl whose blood pooled on the gym floorboards had been very definitely dead. That girl – 

That empty chair in the courtroom. Fourteen-fifteen-sixteen. He counted it up. He matched the faces. All but one. That quiet one with the dark hair. Enoshima's sister, he remembered, Enoshima's shadow. The only one who hadn't been there after he woke up in the new order of things. "Ikusaba–"

"Is _dead_!" He cringed as her hand went up, her face contorted. "Undeniably irreversibly _dead_! Takes one to know one, huh, _retard_?" She found something else funny and smiled again. "And what a squeamish retard you are, eh, Kuwata-kun? You made such a fuss rolling up every bit of hair and our dear Sayaka-chan spelled it out as she bled out and you didn't. Even. Notice! That's hilarious, really, thanks. Ah, it's almost enough to make me wish she'd managed to off you but she was just as stupid, really. That mouse Fujisaki was right there and she settled on _you_?"

_(It could've been any one of you, he'd said, but maybe it couldn't have been. That is, besides the fact that she'd have to have been really crazy to try it on someone like Oowada or Oogami. Maizono knew what his dream was. He'd told her, straight out. In the cafeteria he'd gone on about his favorite bands while she sipped her tea and smiled her perfect idol smile.)_

_(He fumbled to unsheathe the sword that had practically risen into his hand – like someone up there didn't want him to die here, he'd wanted to think.)_

_(You must understand, she'd shouted, then, you don't understand!)_  
  
"A-ny-ways! And now you're not only a dumbass but murderously dumb!"

"No," he said. He knew it wouldn't work any better than it had before. "That's not what –"

"That's right!" she crowed, jabbing one red-nailed finger at him. "You killed her with your _stupid_!" 

"No, I –"

Her voice dropped and sweetened. "Charged right in. Leon Kuwata, Super High School Level Diplomat, that's you, isn't it? You spent two years making eyes at her and you finally got to stick something in, aha. You remember now, right? Of _course_ you do! I was a teensy bit worried at first that I hadn't rattled your brains enough, silly me." Her head tilted. Her chuckle this time was something he'd heard far more recently. 

"You," he breathed, eventually. "It was _you_."

"Girls don't like it when you blame everything on them, Kuwata-kun, no wonder you never got a second date."

He stared and said nothing. What more could he say, _I got plenty of second dates_? Even though it was true it was just sad to say. Maybe pretended bravado, _eh, I didn't know you were a furry, Enoshima_. 

She bored quickly and turned toward the machine. Her fingernails danced over the buttons and dials. "Let's see, how long's it been since the last dose? Use that big mouth of yours. Entertain me and I'll give you another shot." 

She was beginning to look impatient by the time he managed to open his mouth again. It didn't take much to entertain her. He wasn't relieved when she slipped a hand beneath her skirt. He was right; not long after that she turned the random shocks back on and kept at it while she watched him plead and jerk and gasp frantically to get back the air his screams and sobs wasted. He quickly lost track of his own words; they jumbled together in an incoherent mass saying more stupid things like _please stop_ and _please let me go_ and _I don't want to die_. He felt her take hold of his cock and start to coax it into dull twinges of the worst pleasure he'd ever felt. She didn't get it much further than twinges before losing patience once more but when she lost patience she climbed back onto his face and made him eat her out a second time. Sometime during that he managed to fall away from the world, and hid there until she slapped him awake again. He looked dully at her, wondering what else she could do. 

"I'm _so_ glad we understand each other," she said. "Tell you what, I'll give you another chance. Kill me and you can still graduate. Aren't I nice?" He said nothing. She pressed buttons out of his sight and left. 

She kept her word on that much. The tide of pain went back out and he slept for a long time.

***

Enoshima – the real Enoshima – came in and out each evening with food and water he ate and drank like a dog. Once, for no apparent reason, she brought a drink of something with a fancy label she claimed was from the headmaster's stash. She came in and out and brought fresh violations.

With the lights on Leon became familiar with the room – half swanky, half cell. One door, no windows, not even covered ones. Surveillance cameras glinted. Against the opposite wall a wide-screen television with a home theater system sat flanked by pristine white shelves that held a pair of slim disc cases and a heavy photo album. A dresser, a mirror, a digital clock that gave him his only sense of time when he sat up and craned his neck, a card table and a pair of folding chairs. Toilet, basin, and glass-walled shower clustered in one corner, with fuck-all for privacy even if he wasn't naked all the damn time and it wasn't her scrubbing him off. She pointed out that his arms were still broken "and I remember how you _hate_ sweating." After she showed herself she stopped keeping him knocked out, telling him to pull his own weight as much as he could with fractured legs. Now he had to watch and feel how she handled him. 

The first time she made him come after jerking him off he looked down and screamed as if it was blood that came out. She said as much, mocking him while she wrung the washcloth. He puked and spent a hungry night regretting it. Soon after that she started getting him up, then climbing onto him and riding him that way. Leon had wondered sometimes why she left his Sid Vicious necklace on. He found out when she took hold of it and began to twist, sure and even movements that tightened the chain around his throat until he couldn't help but struggle. The first few times she kept going until he passed out and had to spend time shaking him awake and getting him back up but after she had more practice she learned how to keep him just on the verge until the last climactic spasm. "You came like an express train!" she exclaimed the first time she managed this, and he shuddered underneath her knowing what that meant for him. 

One time she brought in what she called an endurance test. Checked the chains that held his hands to the bedposts, buckled some kind of machine over his dick, flipped a switch and sat back with a stopwatch and a little notepad. He'd thought she was going to shock him again but instead the whole thing started buzzing and humming and at first it wasn't much worse than when she touched him herself but then he came and it kept going and for a few hours he flailed on the bed, desperate to move what he could, though his legs hurt every time he kicked. 

Another night she brought in a piercing gun. "Don't be such a baby," she told him at the first shot. "How did you ever survive the first dozen?" She shot it through both nipples and his navel, some other things to hurt between doses, and he thought the only reason she didn't go lower was it might interrupt her sex life. 

She began going longer between giving him chances to beg for painkillers – she had a whole set of ways to make him beg otherwise. It hurt more for a while, then it hurt less. He missed the drugs; sometimes they'd helped him go away. He was getting better, he thought, and that was good, maybe he wouldn't be quite as helpless once he was better. Maybe he might actually be able to kill her. Ha. Ha. 

She didn't need all the chains even after the casts began to come off. He hadn't particularly tried to keep to an exercise regimen before all this, but down here he got next to none. No more mandatory games, or practices to sulk off to when the imploring coach managed to hit a nerve. No runs to and from school, even. Not much to eat either. So he shouldn't have been all that surprised when he finally had a look in the dresser mirror. 

After he could stumble around on crutches she propped him in front of the dresser. She knew what he'd see. He saw it: he saw himself pale and wasted, bony, atrophied, new bruises on his throat, brown roots obvious in the hair that fell tangled in his haggard face with blank eyes that began to fill at the sight; he saw the picture-perfect supermodel smiling over his shoulder. "We'll have to do something about this, won't we?" She leaned over and took one of his earrings between her teeth. He did his best to resign himself; he wouldn't be surprised again if she ripped it out. That time, she didn't. 

When his arms were mostly healed and he was almost at the point where it was theoretically possible that he might, say, throw the clock and crack her skull, she brought out something else. It looked like an anklet he might've bought on his own if he saw it in a shop. She chatted about it as she locked it on just beneath the cast on his left leg. Said it was a project by one of the students who'd gotten the fuck out of Hope's Peak when they had the chance, a tech prodigy like Fujisaki, working on a commission from a collapsed government. It was designed for criminals to neutralize as well as track. "Three cheers for them," she said, and clapped her hands. Leon fell over, twitching, too overwhelmed by the current even to scream. She clapped again, cutting it off. "Leveling the playing field. Can't make this too easy, can I? That would damage the integrity of this fine institution!"

He tried pulling the thing off once. What it did to him when he thought he was finally getting somewhere made him put that idea away.

As he got even better she took out the needles and tubes for good and stopped giving him so much as an aspirin. That gave him a bad few days. She stood over him and got herself off staring at his shivering misery but at least she didn't fuck him. 

He never asked her about the others. She talked about them sometimes, weird things like "It's thanks to you they got the pool and the library back." He didn't fall for it, kept himself from falling for it. He was dead to them, literally dead to them, a dead-as-a-doornail murderer. And they might as well be dead to him. This was what he told himself. Here at least he might not give in. 

Alongside everything else, boredom began to slip back in. Boredom could take root anywhere. When he began to fall into complete apathy, when she found him as boring as he was bored, familiar things began to appear. The top of the dresser cluttered with the small army of bottles and jars he'd kept in his bathroom, the comb, the hairbrush. His guitar showed up propped up against the TV, surrounded by the other music equipment, while his CD collection materialized on the shelves; he understood now why that stuff looked so used when he'd only just bought it on spring break (two years ago). He'd thought when he noticed that Monobear, among the other things it sucked for, sucked at unpacking. 

He hobbled to the dresser and opened the drawers. He found new-old clothes, distinctive ones he now remembered getting after he arrived at Hope's Peak. Studded leather jackets and pants, strategically ripped jeans. They weren't in his room after the mindscrew started; he remembered not seeing them to be confused by them. She must've remembered too, to take them out; he guessed that wasn't surprising for a fashionista. 

He remembered talking to Enoshima after a shopping trip – showing off to the girls and Fujisaki who he'd still thought was a girl. He'd managed to impress her, he thought then. She'd said something relatively non-insulting about his taste. For her that was _something_. 

How long had she planned it all? If it were anybody else – if Maizono had offed him, if someone else had been first to lose their shit – would she have done just this?

He could eat with his own hands and get his own water from the basin, in a plastic cup. He started putting in his favorite CDs on max volume, maybe in the very faint hope that it might be able to make its way through soundproofing that a regular voice couldn't. Lot of yelling in punk rock. Started fumbling around with the guitar. Now that he had clothes again he wore them – starting with sweatpants that would stretch over the casts on his legs, T-shirts that weren't too tight against the new piercings. He went through the old preening rituals with his hair, dyeing the roots back to red, going at it with his arsenal of sprays and gels and all that, fussing over his reflection trying to cultivate the impression of wildness. He could try to pretend the guy pulling faces in the mirror had nothing wrong in the world. He knew she wouldn't give him these things back if they really mattered. Whenever she wanted he'd be on his back with his pants around his ankles and his eyes screwed shut. 

In a sad little experiment he tried hiding his necklace in the sock drawer. The first time, she undid her tie and used it instead. The second time she said, "Go put the lock on," and, hating himself, he did. 

Sometimes he did sit-ups, paced and then ran the length of the room, practiced throwing things at the wall. It was something to do, trying to work his way back up. He used to think of millions of things he'd rather do than practice. His options now were limited. 

He investigated the shelves. The photo album held about what he expected and he closed it hastily over the rows of smiling faces. The two discs turned out to be the motive DVD with his name on it and something labeled neatly _Trial 1:_ _Sayaka Maizono_. That was what finally provoked him to the rage the Leon Kuwata before all this would've thought he would feel 24/7 (if he thought about it). After he snapped it Enoshima brought a replacement, all the while describing how funny his useless temper was. He didn't touch that one. 

When she made him beg he didn't beg anymore for her to let him out, let him go. Where would he go? He begged instead for things that might still happen: _stop hurting me, don't hurt me anymore_ ; if she decided to that could last for the rest of the night. He hadn't stopped begging for what was left of his life. She strangled him often enough that he wasn't complacent.

***

Once after a very bad night, as she lay sated on top of him he asked, "Why?"

"You're so cute when you're a mess," she said. "Most people are. But you guys are special. Be flattered. Didn't I give you all hope? For a while weren't you completely untroubled by the knowledge that your folks have all had their heads smashed in?" 

He hadn't known if they died, how they died. He wondered if what she said was true. 

Those times he felt so lousy that the only thing he could think to do was try to feel worse, he put in the motive DVD and watched the first part. His mother whipped out a camera on a moment's notice so of course she'd taken a video of his last birthday before Hope's Peak (there'd been another birthday while home on winter break before That Thing happened but he guessed if he'd seen it while the memory was gone it might've tripped something she didn't want). He'd known by then that he'd been accepted and his parents wouldn't shut up about it. It was as bad as when he squeaked by in the entrance exams for his last high school, the one with the number-one baseball team in Japan. But he remembered he hadn't minded as much this time, because he had his plan. You could tell from the video, because he didn't grimace half as much as usual when they were waxing poetic about his future. He poked his fork in his third piece of cake and said sure, sure, he was excited, while doing his best to pretend he wasn't in the least. 

"We always knew," said his father. "We knew since you were a little boy."

It was when he was a kid, Leon remembered, that he thought baseball was fun. They might sigh over his grades but they had nothing but praise for him doing what he liked to do. Back then he'd thought that was a pretty good deal. 

Through hard-earned experience, he got the hang of pausing and ejecting before the second part.

***

After she left he'd curl in as far as he could, wrap his arms around himself, play pretend. His imagination had dimmed unless it came to torture; in that case it burst with gruesomeness he could only hope she hadn't thought of. When he tried to picture someone who might hug him and tell him it would all be okay, he got wisps that slipped through his fingers and left him to hug himself and tell himself if he died now he'd never know if it got any better. Told himself he already knew what it was like to almost die, and he knew he didn't like it.

But he hadn't known not dying would mean – 

Fuck that. Man up, he told himself, there were guys out there who'd line up to bang Enoshima even if she was psycho. He'd been thinking sex for years and now he got it, what was the big deal? Life down here wasn't that bad. Not like he had to sleep on straw and shit in a bucket. This argument didn't work very well. 

A small fantasy he could manage: Maizono without blood on her shirt, saying, _I forgive you_. Him saying, _yeah, well, I forgive you too, you nutcase._ Her saying, _It never would've happened if we knew_. Him saying, _'course not. That's why she pulled the amnesia shit_. Him saying, _I shouldn'tve gone in, not when you had the knife, that was goddamn stupid, I guess they'd rather think I was a cold-blooded killer than that fucking stupid._ Her saying, _Forget it, it can't be helped_. Somewhere everything was even, somewhere everything was okay.


	2. Chapter 2

Leon rebelled on what he'd learn was the day they found Chihiro Fujisaki's body strung up in the girls' changing room. 

She'd started leaving boxes on the little table labeled breakfast, lunch, dinner and that day there was a fourth box with a note on top. He opened the "lunch" box first because he could, and opened the note once he finished the sandwich. As was usual for what he'd seen of her writing in the lost two years, it was pocked with smileys.

_:) Looks like I'll be awfully busy today, so do me a favor and doll up for me tonight. Another thing. Open this box, take what you find, and ram it in. Then get on the bed and have fun for the camera! :) You can take it out after that :) :) :) See you!  
_  
The note fell to the table. When the nerves came back to his fingers he lifted the lid of the box and promptly dropped it again. He pulled out a chair and sat down, staring at it as if any moment vipers would slither out. Of course there weren't vipers inside. He'd seen enough to know that. What there was, was something long and thick and black plastic and _fuck_ how would that even fit?And a tiny jar, with a sticky note. The sticky note had another smiley on it. 

He stood and went to the dresser and stared in the mirror for a while before he grabbed the comb and got to work on his hair. 

He tried not to think about it, but by the hundredth yank of the comb he was thinking: like hell he was going to do it. Like _hell_. She wanted things up there, she could stick them in herself. Or she could _try_. No way was he going to let her yank his strings that far. He'd found the line to draw, the place to take a stand. When he put it that way to himself he felt better than he had in a while. 

He spent the day alternating between strumming the guitar and pacing out his unexpected burst of energy, throwing out his worries. After he took a shower he dolled up with sweats and his old jersey because of what they said about hanging for sheep and lambs. When he finally got tired he flopped back on the bed and sang along with the stereo about London drowning. Maybe London had. Things were such a mess last he knew you couldn't even tell if the effects of the Incident made it past the border. If you had a boat maybe, if you could sail over to Korea... When they still got the news there'd been a shaky camera recording on NHK of the mayhem at Narita airport, planes burning on the tarmac. 

Leon felt the fear creeping back in so he sang even louder with the next song, trying to drive it away. It kept creeping as the time grew closer when it would be too late to do what Enoshima said even if he wanted to. It crept on until the CD stopped mid-syllable and the lights went out, and then it burst into the open. 

Eventually he got up and felt his way to the bathroom corner, where he soon confirmed that the water had been shut off as well. There was still noise from the ventilation; he wouldn't suffocate. He got back to the bed, lay back down, made himself smile and laugh to show it'd take more than that, fucker. 

When he woke up he had no idea of the time; the clock's glowing numerals had gone blank with everything else. He still couldn't see anything. No windows, the sealed door, not a speck of light for his eyes to seize on. He did his best to get back to sleep, spend some more dead time. Eventually that stopped working. His mouth was dry and his stomach crumpled in on its emptiness. He wished it'd occurred to him she might do this so he could have filled the cup, plugged and filled up the sink, had at least a little stockpile. 

Once there'd been a bunch of them talking and for some reason the subject turned to camping and then to camping gone wrong. He remembered Ikusaba speaking up for once to say the average person could live such-and-such number of days without water. He wished he remembered how many days she'd said; he only remembered that it was a lot less than days she said you could go without food. Not that it made much of a difference, with no way to count the days.

Even if he could go a good while longer without food it wasn't long before he couldn't stop thinking about it; when he concentrated on something else it flitted at the edges, in wait for an opportunity to shove its way forward and grab his attention again. Hungry and thirsty, he fantasized about things that could do something for both – a bowl of ramen in broth, say, or a milkshake. Which wasn't to say that he couldn't appreciate the tantalization of a cold sweating can of cola or a hot slice of pizza trailing cheese. 

He tried working out a bit, what he could do without smashing into something in the dark, but that didn't go so well because he was nervous about sweating out the water he had left. Nerves made him sweat harder. Eventually he had to visit the toilet, which he almost tripped over; he aimed well, absently pushed the handle when he was finished, and jumped back when he heard the flush. He double-checked the sink and shower. Still nothing. But if this went on, if he really needed water he _could_ – he comprehended the possibility and recoiled from it. He wasn't that far gone, not yet. 

To hear something, to do something, he sang again. In the dark his voice wavered alone. He sang the one he'd used for his opening number at the school festival. He sang the one he'd tried serenading Maizono with one night; he'd tried it four times before the headmaster's daughter passed by and reminded him the dorms were soundproof, and also that for this reason throwing pebbles at the window wouldn't work. He sang the one he'd belted out on a rainy night in dubious harmony with the other boys clustered under umbrellas close as lovers, the intrepid club-sneaker-inners of Hope's Peak making their way back at two in the morning. He stopped when his mouth got too dry, managed a "Fuck you and the bear you rode in on" in the general direction of the nearest camera, managed another nap. In his murky dreams Kirigiri, the headmaster's daughter, the Super High School Level Detective, gave a lecture on dying messages. He woke up too soon with a headache and mouthed a few more obscenities, then hummed for a while, low in his parched throat.

***

At some point, coming out of another uneasy attempt at sleep, it occurred to him that he could die in here. Even if he resorted to drinking from the toilet, which was something she'd probably left working just to see if he'd do it, the starvation would get him eventually. He could rot quietly here among the remains of his life like a particularly pathetic Egyptian king.

Junko Enoshima had killed her own sister. Why wouldn't she let him wither away? Twelve more fish in her little pond to choose from. 

Was this really what he wanted to die for?

***

At some later point he made himself sit up, made himself get off the bed, made himself stand up with his brain whirling in his skull, made himself walk to the table. He barked his shin on a chair. He reached out and knocked over the stack of meal boxes, heard them land on the floor. He found the box with the black plastic thing and the jar and the smiley sticky note, picked it up, stumbled back, almost banged into the chair again, almost tripped over one of the fallen boxes. When he fell forward onto the bed, the lights went on.

He hurried with a surer pace to the sink. The water had come back on too, for now, and he downed two cups and filled another one for later. Back to the bed where he sat cross-legged, took out the jar first. He read the label beneath the note. It looked innocuous enough. He unscrewed the lid and dipped a finger into the white cream, hoping she hadn't arranged another twist like mixing it with Tiger Balm. She hadn't. 

Before he could think too much about it he unfolded his legs long enough to yank off his sweats and his undershorts together, kick them under the bed. He took the thing in one hand and with the other got a glob from the jar. Smeared it on thick; it started to slide off onto the sheets. Better overdoing it than underdoing it. His eyes stung but no tears came out. Once he had as much on it as he'd ever get to stay on, there was the real hard part to get over (get through, get in). And he realized he had no idea how it'd actually be done. 

He started by sitting up against the headboard. Pulled up his legs, tried to get his ass at the right angle, ended up sliding down until he was nearly on his back again. The jersey hiked up under his arms. He reached between his bent legs and maneuvered the thing with both hands until the cold and greasy tip of it touched his ass, went between, pushed against his – his – maybe it really wouldn't fit, he thought as he winced, and what would he do then? Could he tell her he couldn't get it in and she'd, what, send in a smaller one? Stick it in for him, giggling the whole time? Turn everything off again?

He pushed harder and when it actually started to go somewhere he had to resist the impulse to yank it back out, or from the other side to shit it back out. He tried to relax, tried not to tell himself to relax with so much urgency that he'd only tense up more. _Deep breaths._ He got it in a little bit further. 

The lights flickered. 

"No no no _shit_..." 

A little further than that, but apparently not enough; they flickered again. She was trying to scare him, he knew, but that didn't stop him from being scared. Had to get this over with. How? His hands didn't want to go any faster, seemed to have the instinct that doing that would hurt like a motherfucker, but his instincts couldn't seem to take into account that not doing it could lead to hurting worse. So the thing to do was...? 

Physics, maybe, gravity. He got off the bed holding the thing in place with one hand, leaned back until the base touched the mattress and he stood like he was caught in the middle of sitting down on the bed. He let go and felt it shift inside him, almost slide out. Before he could lose his nerve he grit his teeth counted off one two _three_ and threw himself down and back, legs flying out in front of him. 

He didn't scream this time, only because the scream gurgled and choked in his throat and closed mouth. His eyes rolled. He kicked air. His hands closed tight, fingernails jabbing his palms, and he kept them that way so that they couldn't reach down and grab and pull and make things even worse. It wasn't like he hadn't been hurt before, and hurt far worse in the physical sense, but in this interminable moment the thing searing through him was the very worst; he could conceive of nothing else. Nightmare scenarios of his body falling apart around the breach, his guts spilling. _Would starving to death have been this bad?_ he demanded of himself, in no state to give a reasonable answer. _Would death by baseball for real have been this bad?_ That was even harder to answer because what little he managed to think included the thought that if he'd died hanging from the pole with his everything bashed in then she could only have had fun with his corpse, which wouldn't have felt any of it. 

He stopped kicking eventually and lay with his ass at the edge of the bed, legs dangling off. He didn't dare move more than the constant involuntary shudders as his body tried to adjust. The impulse to scream had faded and he only uttered the occasional retching grunt or whimper. He wanted to be sick. He couldn't. He didn't know when food would come again. Sweat dripped and dampened the sheets. He stared at the ceiling lights, as much as his blurring sight allowed. It couldn't last forever and it didn't. Either the pain retreated, or he became used enough to it that he could start to put it in perspective. He could think things like at least he'd greased it up, it could've been worse. Things like, at least this wouldn't leave him in casts for weeks. 

Then the lights flickered again. 

"Oh, no." He barely recognized his own voice. "No..." _What do you_ _want_ , he wished he could shout, _I've just shoved a plastic cock up my own ass what the hell else do you want from me you sadistic psychobitch?_ He thought maybe he had died, at least part of the way. "I... _please_..."

Something else? Something he'd missed? What else? 

He tried to remember the note. Doll up, she'd said. Have fun, she'd said. 

No. Wait. Have fun for the camera, she'd said. What could that mean?

What was the worst possible thing it could mean?

( _Oh do be quiet,_ she'd said looking at his come on the floor, her demeanor suddenly the opposite of the gleeful girl who'd taken hold of him and wouldn't stop, _you'd think that was blood the way you're carrying on_...)

When he opened a hand and reached down, the chimes and whistles of a game show echoed through the room. 

He tried to recall what used to get him hot. The _used to_ of two years ago mingled with the _used to_ of not so long ago when they'd thought of Hope's Peak as a place of safety. He remembered the girl he'd told Naegi about ( _told Naegi about twice_ ), the one who'd used to cut his hair. She'd been vivid in his mind's eye then and he'd focused on the shape of her figure underneath her blue dress and black apron. Placed back in context he thought now about how when she'd heard his name she'd said _Aah, like Keisuke Kuwata?_ instead of _Aah, like Masumi Kuwata?_ which he'd heard shitloads of times before from people who thought they were the first to come up with it. She said what she said the same way they had but that one he hadn't heard before so she got his attention even if she hadn't meant to. He couldn't even remember her name. 

He couldn't think of her. He couldn't think of Maizono, either. He couldn't think of the time the other girls in her band came to visit and they'd congregated laughing together while she pointed out her new friends to oohs and aahs. _That's Kuwata-kun, would you believe he got this far without trying?_ Over a year he'd learnedhe wasn't such an awesome potential boyfriend that she'd break her contract and risk the career he knew by then was that important to her. But eventually it got to the point where when they were among friends he could put an arm out around her without quite touching her, resting on the back of her seat, and she'd turn to him and smile the kind of smile he could tell by then was real. And after the school was sealed off sometimes he'd venture to drape his arm around her shoulders and she'd put her arm around his. They'd started calling each other Leon-kun and Sayaka-chan (which he couldn't do, not anymore). He couldn't think about the blue highlights in her hair or the way she moved in a little cloud of fragrance (scent layering, she'd explained) or that little joke she always made about her intuitions. 

His imagination retreated into dreams that were older and more generic. Idol singers and magazine models he'd only wished he could meet. Long legs and long hair. Eventually he got into it enough that his hips began to rise into his hand, that he began to gasp and then pant. When he moved so did the thing inside him. That kept him from forgetting entirely. But he forgot a lot, enough for him to cry out with something like fulfillment when he'd finished. Enough for him to lie there a while in mindblown oblivion until the horror and shame seeped in. 

You can take it out after you're done, she'd said. Smiley face smiley face smiley face. 

His legs wouldn't hold him up so he crawled across the floor from scratchy carpet to cold tile. He pulled it out in the shower, trying not to listen to the noise it made, trying not to look at it or smell it, flung it into a corner of the shower stall with a briefly satisfying _thunk_. After he turned on the water he realized he was still wearing the jersey. He pulled it over his head, balled it up, threw it in the same direction where it landed with hardly a sound. He dragged himself to the opposite corner where the slowly warming spray aimed and huddled there. From time to time he raised his head and tilted it upward to get a mouthful, quench the thirst that hadn't yet gone. 

Trickles of red swirled in the water, turned yellow as it diluted, washed away. Before this he'd never have guessed blood would go yellow. Not like he'd turned on the water in there with Maizono's body; things might've gone differently if he'd taken the risk and slipped in again after the water came back on, or just seen the dying message and wiped it away with his ruined shirt (would Enoshima really have killed them all, to pound in that it was all his fault? Maybe she really would've let him go out into the fucked-up world, after making sure he knew exactly what he'd done to get it). Something ripped inside him. Not enough blood, not nearly enough blood.

***

" _God_ , you're such a slob," said Monobear, standing just inside the shower. Hearing from the toy after so long with her unfiltered voice made him look over in surprise. "Be grateful your new roommate isn't going to see that mess. There's another movie provided for your edification and entertainment. Oh, and this time don't forget to look nice."

***

There was much more than a movie in the room when he finally left the shower. As for that, a DVD case had been left on the table next to the plate of hot food and the can of cola slick with water droplets. Leon allowed himself a glance before busying himself with looking nice. He had no idea when the new arrival was supposed to show up (with the power back on the clock still blinked zeroes at him and Monobear hadn't set it again) and it was best not to provoke her again so soon.

The bleeding hadn't stopped yet. The additions to the room included a box of tampons. Either she was making fun of him or the roommate was a girl. Leon improvised with wadded toilet paper and black undershorts that wouldn't be so obvious if they stained. In the bottom drawer of his dresser (he noticed a second one on the other side of the bed with more things stacked beside it; there was no new bed and he didn't yet want to wonder about what that meant) he found the Hope's Peak uniform he'd almost never worn – brown suit, white shirt, red tie. He put that on, made sure to tie the tie as his father once taught him one awkward evening (during which his best expression of filial respect was not expressing the opinion that he'd rather be trapped on a diamond batting away for eternity than set foot in an office like the one his father only seemed to leave on a leash). 

Then he let himself go to the table, get a closer look. The DVD was labeled in the same hand _. Trial 2: Chihiro Fujisaki._

***

Chihiro Fujisaki and Mondo Oowada had drifted together early in the school year and afterward drifted through the halls, a pair that occasionally included a third to make it a triangle. He'd been a favorite for third. Sometimes there was a fourth to make it a square, a fifth to make it a pentagon, and so on. In those cases Leon got along with them enough that for their sake he'd willingly spend free time with even Ishimaru the rules wonk.

Fujisaki was a boy, Leon had learned by that fall. A tiny boy who liked some girly things, which some dumbasses wouldn't shut up about, so he'd figured it would be less trouble to go the rest of the way and pretend to be a girl who liked girly things. That wasn't all he liked. Oowada once got a tip on where to get ultra-limited-edition tees commemorating the number-one punk rocker in the history of Japan, and Fujisaki loved his. The one size the shirts came in went so far down his legs that belted it could pass for a dress. And he'd spent hours with Fujisaki hovering over his shoulder and vice versa, egging the other on as they took turns playing their one copy of Project: Zombie. Fujisaki had helped him with physics and math when his grades slid too far. Fujisaki daubed blueberry perfume behind their ears – even Oowada's ears, under protest. To draw the girls, he said with his innocent smile, and by then Leon could tell when it was just a smidge too innocent. He knew about scent layering too, though Leon drew the line at the blueberry shampoo and shower gel they sold with the perfume in gift baskets. 

Who'd ever want to kill Fujisaki? 

Stupid question. That mouse Fujisaki, Enoshima had called him. When he'd lost two years he'd lost all his newfound confidence. Someone looking for a perfect victim wouldn't have looked far.

***

He forced himself to eat, standing up. He turned on the TV and put in the DVD and lay prone on the freshly made bed with the remote control in hand. He wanted to know who to hate.

When the menu came up there were two options, Play and Special Features. He selected Special Features mostly because he wanted to know what could be there, subtitles in Portuguese? No subtitles. Just one thing: What Really Happened. He might as well see the truth straight away instead of watching through who knew how long of everyone left fumbling their way to it, with the multiplying red-slashed portraits staring from the empty places. He pointed and pressed. 

The footage began in a room full of stuff. It was at a high angle, probably from a surveillance camera. Fujisaki stood picking out a jersey, stuffing it in a duffel. 

Celes entered with a rustle of skirts. The last time he'd seen Celes she'd leaned forward and asked _What exactly about your actions was self-defense?_ and he couldn't answer. _You really did feel like killing her, didn't you_ , she'd said without a question mark.He leaned forward. Celes didn't kill Fujisaki. Fujisaki left the storage room alive, with the bag, with the jersey zipped inside. He walked through familiar halls and up the unblocked stairs to the second floor. Leon remembered: the pool, the library. Fujisaki took out his ID and swiped it at the boys' changing room door. Oowada waited inside. 

" _Shit_!" 

He dropped the remote and looked down, examining the pattern on the new blanket, hands hovering inches from his ears. He wanted to think it was another fakeout, that the whole film would be Fujisaki wandering around and into people until one of them killed him at the last minute, but trying to convince himself so wouldn't do any good. He listened. Fujisaki was revealing he was a boy all over again. Something about a lot of secrets that Monobear (Enoshima) was going to reveal. He listened to Oowada's voice rise to a yell. Listened to Fujisaki, frightened and bewildered, trying to speak around his tears. He turned his head toward the new dresser. He saw the things piled up and now he recognized the duffel. 

Leon knew the sound of the knife going into Sayaka Maizono and the spears going through Mukuro Ikusaba. Now he knew the sound of a dumbbell going down on Chihiro Fujisaki's head. 

He looked up a minute later. It wasn't over yet. The girls' door was opening for Oowada. How had he done that? He could guess as he watched Oowada rush back and forth between the changing rooms, fumbling between a pair of IDs, carrying Fujisaki's small limp body wrapped almost reverently in the stained mat, carrying the bloody dumbbell, exchanging posters. 

Split-screen, then. Oowada throwing an ID into the sauna, sticking another one in the letterbox in the front hall, stuffing the duffel under his bed. On the other side Togami doing something like Oowada did to get into the girls' room, looking over the scene, Fujisaki crumpled on the floor, then doing some fucked-up thing with hanging up Fujisaki and painting with his blood _what the everloving fuck_. 

Fade to black. Fade back in with the door opening again on Naegi and Togami. Fade back out with Naegi screaming, Togami looking smug. The end. In this case, as the closing title card helpfully pointed out, The Beginning.

***  


Leon crouched at the side of the bed, which would hide him in the view from the doorway. He wound the cord around the unplugged clock and hefted it in one hand.

_(Fujisaki with his head lowered over the physics textbook saying, um, Kuwata-kun, if it's all right, maybe you could think about how you throw a baseball? You might not work out equations about it, but you probably know about angles and forces, and how to change them to get the ball to go where you want. Is that right?)_

_(I knew there were more reasons to hate baseball, said Leon, and Fujisaki knew him well enough to laugh.)  
_  
At his feet he'd gathered a nearly-full tub of hair clay, the unopened can of cola, so on. For close range he'd found the baseball bat in with Oowada's stuff. The length of pipe went under the bed, harder to find and to reach. 

It was safe now to be angry. He was furious at Enoshima, of course, for doing this to them, for doing what she did to him, but he couldn't let it out like he wanted. She held all the cards. Oowada, though, was in the same boat and Leon could rage to his heart's content. Here was someone else worse than him. Oowada had been his friend once. Fujisaki had been _their_ friend. It wasn't like Fujisaki had gone at him with a butcher knife. Exactly the opposite! He'd gone to the bastard for help, all wide-eyed earnest admiration, and that fucker had brained him with a dumbbell screaming about his older brother. 

Oowada's brother was dead, Leon knew. The guy had told him once. Motorcycle accident. 

He counted three hundred twenty-two blinks of the clock before he heard the door open. 

He restrained his hair with his free hand and raised himself to peer across the bed as a disheveled Oowada almost tripped over the threshold. The door closed. Oowada regained his balance, started to look around. Before he had a chance to get oriented Leon jumped to his feet, yelled "You _sonofabitch_!" and let fly. 

The clock was aimed for Oowada's head, blocked by his shoulder going up as he turned. "Sonofabitch!" Oowada echoed, grabbing at where it hit. His eyes followed the trajectory and widened. "Kuwata – ?" Leon followed with the cola can and grabbed the bat just before Oowada was on him. 

He fought like he'd never dared to fight Enoshima but it wasn't enough. This was the kind of thing that got Oowada into Hope's Peak as the number-one delinquent in the country _and_ he was taller and stronger _and_ he hadn't spent who knew how long lying tied up in bed _and_ he didn't have that new pain to deal with, to distract him at the worst moments. He ripped the bat from Leon's grasp early on and Leon heard it clatter on the tile where it landed. He couldn't kick with the weight on his legs. 

"– the fuck's the matter with you, bastard –!"

"The matter with me, the matter with _me_ , I'm not the goddamn murderer here –"

"You fucking kidding me, that's so rich it'd make fucking Togami choke, you're a killer, I'm a killer, _we're all killers here_ –"

"Don't you fucking dare judge me when you bashed in Fujisaki's skull! I _saw_ you, you fucker, I _saw_ –"

Oowada grabbed the red tie and yanked.

***

"Kuwata – shit – Kuwata! Fucking breathe! _Breathe_!"

Didn't have to shout, Leon thought. He was breathing just fine. The actual strange thing that happened was that he'd gone slack and shut-eyed as if someone had flipped his off switch, cut his strings. His brain included; he'd gone blank and come to with Oowada holding him up by the shoulders, still sitting on his pinned legs. When Oowada shook him he felt his head flop with the movement like a rag doll's. For the moment he liked the idea of staying like that. If Oowada thought he was dead he'd also think there wasn't much point in beating the crap out of him. 

"Come on, stop fucking with me!"

If it had been any other tone Leon would've happily continued to fuck with him. The too-familiar frantic note – that he couldn't take. "'m not dead," he muttered. "Get off me."

Oowada laid him back down with care he hadn't expected and got off him. He stayed sprawled on the floor and breathed as instructed. 

"You look like _shit_ ," said Oowada, too loud. 

I _sound_ like shit, Leon thought, on a tangent. All that choking did a number on his vocal chords, maybe a permanent one. Couldn't tell for sure until he wasn't being strangled all the time. At least punk rock wasn't known for being melodious. Might even be a gimmick, having a hanged man's voice... Would sticking a knife in a girl's gut and leaving her to bleed out in the shower be a gimmick too? he snapped, and shut down that line of thought. The tie had been loosened so that the knot had ended up halfway down his chest, where Oowada had pulled back the jacket and unbuttoned the shirt. If he hadn't seen the marks on Leon's neck during the fight he was definitely getting an eyeful now. 

"You remember too?"

"Yeah," said Leon, drifting somewhere near the ceiling. "I remember. Two years. Down the drain."

"That girl... she's off her fucking rocker!"

"Think I didn't know that?" 

"Never said so, dumbass."

"Think she's a girl you'd be okay with hitting?"

"For fuck's sake!" He heard Oowada walk off and start examining the room. "But if there's anyone... yeah. Her! Maybe Fukawa if I gotta." 

"Fukawa? Why Fukawa?"

"You didn't see that part? Came out in the trial." 

"Didn't watch the trial. What happened?"

"Okay, so she's a goddamn serial killer!"

Leon opened his eyes. "I hear that right? Serial killer?"

"Right. Genocider Syo! The 'Bloodstain Fever' guy! Girl!"

"Holy shit. And nobody kicked the bucket until _this_? Y'know, if I had to guess a serial killer I'd've picked Togami, the fuck was up with that?"

"Nah, hasn't killed anyone yet, he's just an asshole!" At that point they seemed to simultaneously comprehend what they were bantering about and fell back into silence. He still heard Oowada's steps on the carpet. Eventually the silence broke. "You've been... down here this whole time?"

"Looks like it. How long since...?"

"Bit over a month."

"I mean since your..."

"Dunno exactly. A day, two, give or take."

"You... don't look like shit."

"Wasn't that bad by itself. Got spun around a while, electrocuted a bit. There was a trapdoor. The hardest part was landing. Not like yours, with all the..."

"Right," said Leon, "not like mine."

"Hey, uh, that reminds me."

"Yeah?"

Oowada moved toward him again, into view, and held something out. "I took your ID."

He'd dismissed the ID as gone with nearly everything else on him when he'd been dragged through those doors. He'd given more thought to his jacket; he'd loved that jacket. "Oh. Just toss it over there." He raised one hand high enough to wave vaguely toward his dresser. 

"You okay? I mean, can you get up?"

"If I want to."

"Okay."

Something occurred to him. "What're you doing with my ID anyway?"

"'s kind of a stupid story."

"Uh huh?"

"Broke mine, that's the stupid part, how it broke, and there were the dead – there were spares lying around in the front hall and yours was the only boy's card."

Ah. "That's how you got into the girls' side. You grabbed Maizono's, or Ikusaba's."

"Ikusaba's... right, now I get it. The freckles. Her own sister. Shit." He cleared his throat. "So you saw it."

"Pretty much." He waved again, toward the TV. He was only just slipping down from the ceiling and really didn't want to move his body to get up. "Mine's the one with Maizono's name on it. Should be there. In the Special Features."

"Special Features? Look, you don't have to..."

"You show me yours, I show you mine." Back in his body the bits in his head that handled feelings revved back up, anger top priority. What was it to him? He'd already lived through it and all the ugly details had been dragged out during the trial anyhow, all but _that_ part. Next to Oowada he had nothing at all to be ashamed of, nothing at least to do with that night. In the sane and normal world _that_ part would've saved him, would've absolved him, the self-defense, the never meaning to do what Maizono tried to do to him first.

Though in the sane and normal world Maizono wouldn't have tried to kill him in the first place. 

And probably in that world they wouldn't have believed him either.

"Um. Maybe later. Right now I gotta... wash up and shit. That okay with you?"

"Knock yourself out."

He watched the ceiling while the water ran. He was half asleep when Oowada called, "Hey, what's with this?" and that woke him up straightaway. 

Leon knew too, straightaway, what he was talking about. The tampons. "For bleeding, I guess."

"There's, uh, a lot of that?"

"Depends."

"Oy," Oowada said a little while later, "at least get in bed or something, you're freaking me out."

"You take the bed," said Leon, and he could already picture the play-by-play of the test of selfless manliness that would end in the bed going empty for the night (was it night?). But Oowada didn't start it then. 

Still later Oowada said, "Take a look at this." This time he didn't get as close. Leon had to sit up to get a good look. One thing in each hand. A handheld console, a game case. Project: Zombie. Splashed across the box art, _not for resale_. He said, "I found these in with my stuff. They were kind of yours, weren't they? This thing with the zombie rock star dominatrix?"

"The rock star's not a zombie, the zombies are her –"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, about half mine," said Leon. He remembered his handheld had suffered a lot more than this one; it was pristine, could pass for out-of-the-box. The way Fujisaki kept his things. "Fujisaki..." He stopped, started again. The name visibly pained Oowada as much as it did him. "Fujisaki pulled some strings. Got us one of the review copies. We traded days. After... after we woke up, I didn't have it." 

"He didn't either," said Oowada. "I saw him playing it once, after, um, that. We were talking and I asked him about it. He said he got it from Naegi and Naegi got it from that weird prize machine. I guess after..."

Leon remembered his Yasu Shishido shirt, folded in the dresser. He remembered getting it after Oowada's tipoff and he remembered Naegi giving it to him. "Stuffed our shit in there for us to buy it back? Sounds like her." And with Fujisaki dead she might've thrown it in, for a reminder.

"Anyhow, you should have it."

"Sure," said Leon, though he thought he'd be sympathizing a lot more with the zombies. He got to his feet. "You find the power cord too?"

He had, and they found an outlet by investigating behind the television setup. That reminded them both about the DVD marked _Trial 1: Sayaka Maizono_ , and after they plugged in the handheld to charge Oowada asked again if he was really okay with showing him. Leon stuck it into his hand and went back to his spot on the carpet. He lay down on his stomach facing the empty wall, his arms folded underneath his head. 

He thought he was ready but when he finally heard Maizono's voice come through the speakers he knew he was the farthest thing. She was talking to Naegi about switching rooms for the night. Naegi was telling her about his bathroom door. Naegi had been everyone's friend.

The scritch of a pencil on notebook paper. The doorbell to his room chiming. A jump of five minutes: himself calling out, quizzical, opening the unlocked door – 

He lowered his head, clapped his hands over his ears, pressed them tight. It wasn't enough. They'd been that loud. 

_You don't understand! You're such a lighthearted person!_

_No! Get away from me! Don't kill me! No! I don't want to die!  
_  
His mind raced ahead – Hagakure's ball smashing on the control panel, the roar of the incinerator, Naegi's scream (Naegi had truly rotten luck). It never got there; the sound cut out abruptly but he kept his hands where they were. He flinched through his entire body when Oowada touched his shoulder. 

"Fuck. I didn't know. Nobody knew."

"Doesn't matter." His voice was thick. It wasn't what he'd thought fifteen minutes ago, he knew that, but it really didn't. All that would've been different was maybe they'dve been a bit sadder, they'dve remembered him a little better, as an idiot instead of a killer. 

If he wasn't a killer who'd killed Maizono? 

"Fuck's sake," said Oowada, hauling him halfway upright. "You're not gonna flop around here all... all night. Come on... _shit_!"

He said this because something had finally tripped the last switch, opened the last set of floodgates, and Leon started bawling outright, all the times he'd wanted to but held it back ( _won't do anything but get her hot, do you want to give that bitch the satisfaction, man up_ ) rushing out in a torrent all over Oowada who at least didn't say any of the things Leon feared he would say, just muttered somewhere under the messy sobs full of snot and saltwater, "Shit... shit... _shit_..."

***

"You've gotta think I'm such a wuss," he managed, stuffed in bed with the blanket pulled over him like a child hiding from monsters.

"It's got nothing to do with wussing," said Oowada from his seat at the edge of the bed. "Fujisaki... you know what he was like and he wasn't a wuss at all. Actually, it's kind of a relief. First you were so pissed, then you went all blank and not-there and I didn't have a clue how to get you back." 

He was still wearing the stupid uniform, everything but the tie. To wear anything else he'd have to take it off and he still didn't want to in front of Oowada. Oowada had guessed by now she'd been doing things to him, but knowing that was just the tip of the fucking iceberg. Was she going to do the same kind of thing to Oowada? Make him do those things? He should warn him, Leon thought, but his throat had closed up again. 

New dreams tentatively peered out from the depths. There were two of them now. Now they had a numbers advantage, it wouldn't be as risky as any of the awful plans Leon had briefly entertained solo. Except there were the cameras, so if they tried to plan anything she'd know straight away. And she had to have known that before deciding to throw Oowada in with him. 

And why'd she done that? Not so they could keep each other company out of the goodness of her heart – though she'd probably say so with an air of wounded virtue. Given the size of Hope's Peak and how little the others had access to even with the second floor open, he couldn't believe she didn't have space to keep them separate. At the very least it was for the same reason she'd brought his stuff – to excite things, to keep him (them) attached to the pieces of the world they had left. He didn't want to think about what worse things she could have planned for them, though he'd almost certainly have to face them. 

Oowada yawned. The mattress shifted as he removed his weight. 

"Hey, wait."

"Yeah?"

"It's a big-ass bed," said Leon, and it was, but he was surprised to be saying so. "Should be room, right?"

There was room; Oowada proved it when his weight came back down. Enough room to lie on opposite sides without touching, which was what they proceeded to do. 

"So you know," he said after a minute, when snoring hadn't begun.

"Yeah?"

"She's into some kinky shit." He still tried to sound flip. "Just so you know. If you didn't already."

A brief silence. "You mean, Project: Zombie kinky?"

He almost laughed. "Nah, I mean, you know maximum Yamada-level kinky?" 

"Yeah, and wish I didn't."

"Leaves him eating dust."

"Huh. I'll keep that in mind."

He could console himself: it was kind of a warning. And when Oowada snored and hogged the blanket it was a small strange moment to treasure.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On food availability: we know they have milk in the school because of Celes's exacting tea preferences. There's one free time event where Yamada goes into cola withdrawal, which suggests a lack of processed/brand name food (hence the happiness when Naegi gives out snacks from the prize machine). However, judging from some of her dialogue, Asahina has little problem getting doughnuts.

He discovered Enoshima's solution to what strength they had in numbers on what was probably the following morning. Leon had gotten up to take a shower. She timed it so he was toweling off inside the stall when he heard the room door opening and pushed the shower door aside in turn to see a Monobear on the threshold with something ominously metal clamped in its paws, a length of chain dragging behind it. "Kuwata-kun!" it chirped. "You've been summoned to the headmaster's office!"

Oowada groaned in his sleep and rolled halfway over. Overnight he'd developed a shiner from where Leon hit him in the eye with the cola can. Leon tried not to look toward him for too long. He also tried not to clutch the towel too defensively around himself, tried to think of a response that wasn't pitiful or unwise, and didn't before the Monobear continued. "You have ten minutes to make yourself presentable!" The door slammed. 

Leon looked at the clock where it had landed after he threw it, maybe broken, and very briefly panicked. Then he put on _Never Mind the Bollocks_ , turning down the volume to accommodate Oowada who still hadn't woken up and Leon hoped he wouldn't. He knew about how long each track ran and gave himself until the end of the third song to arrange clean underwear and throw clothes on top. That done, he brushed his hair, trying to decide whether to delve into the sock drawer where he'd left the lock necklace, until the Monobear reopened the door. 

Close up he could see what it was holding for sure. A loop at the other end of the chain – a noose, a collar. He thought immediately of the one that closed around his neck and dragged him away. He'd managed a crazy thought alongside his terror as he'd scrabbled at it trying to relieve the pressure that left the first ring of bruises – throttling didn't seem as personalized, as special a punishment as all that. 

The crazy thought he had now: no necklace, then. 

Later he'd regret that she didn't need to say a thing through the Monobear before, guessing what she wanted, he went to his knees for it to put the choke chain over his head and tighten it around his neck. Its mechanical face was inches away from his and he shut his eyes until he felt a tug. It had turned around and left the room, holding the chain, and he had to follow. The music went on until it turned back to close the door and soundproofing took effect all at once. 

The bear didn't leave enough slack for him to stand up and walk behind it; he had to crawl, trying to go fast enough so the collar wouldn't pull any tighter. As they went further down the hall, too fast to get a good look, it began to bound along like a merry kids' cartoon and it got even harder to keep up. When it led him into a tiny room that turned out to be an open-topped elevator, he was so relieved to catch his breath that for a while he didn't care that the thing hopped up and seated itself on his back. He'd picked jeans with pre-torn holes at the knees that were already wearing wider on the floor; the floor was hard and cold but at least it wasn't abrasive. 

The elevator stopped with a set of ladder rungs in front of him. He looked up. In the dim light, his eyes followed the rungs to a trapdoor that promptly swung open. There was more light beyond, though not much more. He blinked into it. 

"Well?" she called from above. Her mood for the moment was imperious. "Come in. And close the door behind you."

The Monobear had gone still on top of him. He took it off carefully. There wasn't that far to climb. Something to be thankful for with his limbs turning further into jelly with every clink of the trailing chain against the wall. Higher up he could see more of the room above – a cold room full of blinking lights, like the cockpit of a space jet. 

Or the cockpit of a Monobear. He climbed out and turned around to see the large black chair facing the massive control panel. Once the trapdoor clicked back into place the chair swiveled around to reveal Enoshima ensconced in it, one leg flung over the other. " _There_ you are." She held out a hand expectantly. 

Again, without a word between them, he fished up the end of the chain and offered it to her. 

She smiled from on high and put her other hand in his damp hair, drew her fingernails against his scalp not quite hard enough to hurt. "Good boy." Then she slid to her feet and drew him behind her into the next room. 

This one was larger, even more dizzying. Computers on otherwise-empty desks. More lit-up consoles. Screens four high, with footage from the school cameras. He tried not to gape at the screens that showed the people who were left. His hunger to _know_ collided with the guilt of seeing and knowing that they were all in their rooms, nearly all of them in bed and with various amounts of clothes off. Most of them had the lights off too but Asahina sprawled atop the covers in her underwear with her light on, clutching a pillow, and Ishimaru lay straight-limbed on them in full white uniform – boots and all – with open and empty eyes. He tried to shake the notion that they watched him reproachfully as he lowered his own gaze. 

This used to be Data Processing. No students allowed, to stop them pulling shit like spying on each other in the shower. Some of them used to sneak in and dick around until the staff chased them out. On the fourth floor, he thought he remembered. The pool and the library were on the second floor. _Thanks to you._ If it was a pattern, what happened to Fujisaki would've opened the third. So the others would have access to the floor below at most, probably with more shutters on the stairs, and bolting screaming for the door into the hall would do less than shit even if it wasn't locked, even if she couldn't bring him down with a clap of her hands, even if he had any idea what he might do if he reached them. 

"So _boring_ this time of day," said Enoshima. "Especially since nobody bit it last night. Ratings must be plummeting. We're already losing our gains from the transvestite and juvenile delinquency episodes." 

Leon's hands closed tight. He pinned his mouth shut with teeth in his lip to keep from saying something he'd immediately wish he hadn't.

"If only you'd managed to bang her. You could've at least made it to third base. We could've cut in the footage. Back and forth. So picturesque. It's what they call dramatic irony." 

She'd talked like this before, like the whole thing was on TV wherever TV still worked, watched with bated breath by all the world that wasn't busy tearing itself to pieces. He'd mulled it over and still didn't know whether he wanted it to be true. If it was true then people would have to know what had become of them, people could still try to help them, and they'd know exactly where to go to stage a rescue unless she'd managed to do something like shoot the campus into space. But if it was true, those people would have seen it all. They'd _know_...

She seated herself, turned this chair as well so that her back was to the desk, flipped up her skirt to show the nothing she wore underneath. Tugged at the chain. "You know what to do."

He knew, and he did it – shuffled forward on his knees, put his face between her legs. He wasn't used to this angle, but the layout was the same. Without her sitting on his face blocking the light he could see her there, see what he was doing. He shut his eyes. 

"Good boy," she crooned again, in the cutesy voice this time, and her hand went back into his hair. During the minutes that followed she alternated between petting it, running her fingers through it, grabbing it and using it to demand more enthusiasm. Her voice switched and switched – "Deeper, harder," she'd order. "Mmm so good more more," she'd sigh. "Suck it, bitch!" she'd snarl, pulling his head forward. His tongue pressing into her, his face slick with her arousal. He'd learned how to move his tongue so the stud pressed just where she liked. He tried not to let it bother him that she pulled his hair so hard. She could be pulling the chain. 

Then she did pull the chain, pulled him close as he could go, clamped his head in place with her thighs, shouted keep going keep going _more_ you lazy bastard _more_ – and he gasped against her clit trying to draw in what little air he might find. His hands were free this time and he moved them to clutch the bottom of the chair but the chain kept drawing tighter and eventually he lost control and began to claw at her legs with nails chewed to the quick. Her voice now seemed to travel through water. She still sounded angry but he didn't know if it was because of him. He didn't know how he could do more than annoy or amuse her when his struggles were desperate and useless as the wingbeats of a pinned butterfly. He thought wildly of biting – he was going to die this time, he was convinced for the hundredth time, what was there to lose? – but he couldn't bring his jaws together.

***

On his back again, his legs wide, her weight on him, her hair in his face, her voice cloying in his ear. He kept his eyes closed but she could tell he was conscious. "Now give us a kiss." He opened his mouth beneath hers. "Not like that, silly. Like you mean it."

He'd managed to get to kissing before, in all those dates, enough times to get good at it. That was his specialty, his big mouth, one he could grin with and kiss with. In the winter sunlight outside a mall, giving Oowada a crash course in how to get phone numbers. Fujisaki, wearing pants, looking on in fascination. How to not scare them off, how to not look like a creep or a psychopath. How to smile so even the girls who didn't say immediately _Ohmygod is that him?_ (and in Oowada's case most girls who said that wouldn't take it as a plus)would look twice, and smile back. 

She pulled him to his feet, kept him on his feet while his legs stopped trembling. "Again." She pulled him in deeper, one hand on the back of his head, one hand on the chain, and mouthed the traces of herself from his face. He tried to pretend like he had yesterday (was it yesterday?), imagine someone else, but with her so close he couldn't. When he slipped his tongue into her mouth trying to act like he meant it he assumed she would bite him, was glad she didn't. When the kiss was finally over she held him at arm's length, looked him up and down. "Smile." He managed something watery and cringing. This time she was satisfied with that much. She sat back down and said, "Okay, take it off, all of it off."

He took it off. The T-shirt could go over his head but he had to leave it hanging on the chain like an abandoned flag. She eyed the piercings in his torso and asked innocent questions about infection. When he pulled down his undershorts the new square of toilet paper fell out and to the floor. He felt himself go almost as red as the blot of bright blood. She'd think it was hilarious, he knew, and she did; she laughed and laughed and made cracks about that time of the month.

She was still laughing when she stood again and stepped toward him again and started to pose him like a doll – arranged his hands on the back of his neck, kicked his legs further apart, stepped back from time to time to examine him. He stayed where she put him and when she did things like pinch his thigh or twist the ring in a nipple he did his best not to pull away. 

Once satisfied, she ordered him to put some damn pants on as if she hadn't wanted them off in the first place. She was brusque now, and tapped her foot while he dressed. "Clean up before Night Time," she ordered, pushing a small cardboard box into his hands. "I don't want to see your shit. Get your groceries. I've had it up to here with cooking for you bums. You have until a quarter to."

The Monobear was still inert in a corner when he went back to the elevator. This time the elevator went down and stopped in front of what looked like a door; on the other side he stepped into the school kitchen, where a near-invisible panel had opened in the wall. A wire shopping basket waited in front of it. All set up. 

He went to the door into the cafeteria and tried it first because he couldn't not after the thing with the collar. He took a moment then to find the clock (6:18, forty-two minutes until Night Time ended, minus fifteen, that made twenty-seven) and examine the box she'd given him, read the tiny-print instructions on the discreet packaging. Something else to stick up his ass, he should've guessed. At least he'd had bigger. It shouldn't tear him up worse. He dropped it in the basket and began to look around at things he'd started to assume he'd never see again. Stoves, ovens, refrigerators, pots and pans in an array of sizes and materials. The line of knives on the wall, full again – Maizono's knife, or one like it, replaced in its slot. He thought of taking one. But she knew she'd be leaving him in a room with sharp stuff; she'd be ready for that, like she was ready for the hair scissors and the safety razor with the little box of replacement blades (and the bat, and the pipe). He'd probably just end up falling over onto it when she turned on the shock in the anklet. 

Besides, he was starting to feel sick wondering if it _was_ that knife, the same one in Maizono's good hand when he grabbed her arm, the one he'd wrenched aside and _around_ – 

He started to move: looked for the bread, found it. Six pieces went into the mega-toaster. How to fill the basket? He beelined for the cabinets and sections of refrigerator he knew held the stuff you couldn't make in here, or not easily. There were massive stockpiles of some foods – dry, canned, instant – along with smaller quantities of perishables like the cartons of milk and the wrapped packages of meat and fish. They hadn't raised cows or pigs in the greenhouse, had they? No, just chickens, and there were plenty of eggs. He grabbed some of those eggs and packages of bacon and sausage and presliced ham and tossed them on the counter for later. This morning there were two boxes of doughnuts, a half-dozen in each, the kind Asahina always jumped on, and the boxes were the colorful ones you'd put them in at a store. And they looked like the same sort of doughnut in the stores, the kind they advertised as baked daily. He grabbed one and took a bite; it tasted fresh, too. That wouldn't have been strange to him before he got his memories back, or the meat, or the milk, but now he knew for sure A: someone out there was still making them and B: there had to be some way to get them past the mess outside into the school. There was still an opening, somewhere. Whatever good that did him. 

Moving on, finishing the doughnut, taking along the rest of the box (sorry, Asahina). Cups of instant ramen, plus one of the miniature water boilers they could plug in and fill from the sink. Jam jars for the toast (all store-bought, though he remembered they'd starting making their own; anyone seeing one of those jars, labeled with Hagakure's improbable penmanship, would've smelled a rat straight away). Handfuls of candy. A conscientious trip to the produce bins for fruit. A box of teabags. A couple of coffee mugs, two each of plates and bowls. Chopsticks, forks, butter knives, spoons. Metal or sturdy plastic, not paper plates and picnic sporks. 

A bit under twenty minutes left. Enough time to use all the culinary prowess he could scrape up to fry a jumble of meats and eggs, dump it on the plate where he'd already stacked the toast, cover that with another plate upside down. He filled his lungs with the smell as he leaned back on the counter, caught himself about to smile. His world was so small and dingy now he could be happy for _this_. And immediately he thought about how she might take it away. 

But maybe she wouldn't; from what he could tell, that wasn't her style. What she did was train him to follow her fucked-up rules because if he did what she said, no matter how much it hurt, afterward he could lick his wounds and listen to his music and hide in the tatters of his old life. 

Just before a quarter to, he went back into the elevator like a good boy and closed the wall behind him. The Monobear was gone now. He stepped into the hallway alone, with time to look around. He didn't have much to look at. The doors had no hint of what was behind them, and the only one left unlocked led into the too-familiar room where Oowada waited holding the pipe he'd retrieved from under the bed. When he saw Leon he sagged with something that might've been disappointment or relief. 

"Look what I got," Leon announced, unpacking his spread. The pride he had left went to being proud for making food happen. 

Oowada stared at him. It took way too long to figure out why. After a few false starts Leon worked the chain off over his head and scrubbed his face at the sink before rejoining Oowada at the table, where he ate standing up.

***

The clock was back on his dresser, showing something like the right time. Oowada said the Monobear had come by while he was gone and set it. Oowada asked about the kitchen, about the cameras, and winced when Leon described what he'd seen of Ishimaru. He wanted to ask more, Leon knew, but he didn't, and Leon didn't say, and without talking they agreed to leave it there. They agreed in the same way to leave the door open. It looked better, like they had choices, like they could walk out whenever they wanted to somewhere more than a locked-up hallway.

They said next to nothing the rest of the morning. When nature called for one of them the other one turned away without being asked. Oowada lay around, mostly, sleeping again or joining the ranks of those who stared at the ceiling in search of cosmic truth. After Leon hid Enoshima's box in his dresser with some clumsy sleight-of-hand Oowada at least pretended not to notice (best-case scenario Oowada thought all he was doing was hoarding candy bars), he tucked his legs under him and bent over the guitar and that made most of the noise. Sometime around noon it was Oowada who went and filled two ramen cups with hot water and weighed down the paper lids with chopsticks. He brought one over. "Thanks, man," said Leon, and aside from the remains of strangled hoarseness sounded almost normal. 

Before this, if he'd thought of it, he'd thought that if he had the chance to talk to anyone besides _her_ he'd never shut up. What was there left to say? "This blows." "Race you across the room." "Just double-checking, you weren't kidding when you said Fukawa's Genocider Syo? _That_ Fukawa? Wouldn't we've smelled the blood on her before she started taking showers?" "So, Junko Enoshima, crazy or _super_ crazy?" They'd been friends, hadn't they? But the things he remembered them talking about back then were far away if not gone altogether, or else he'd feel stupid saying them in this place. 

One thing left to say, which he didn't: _Why? And why Fujisaki? Out of everyone why him?_ Any answer he got wasn't going to make things any better. He didn't ask. 

Another take on a well-worn question, one he had no chance of getting an answer to at all: _Why?_ he'd demanded since _that_ night, staring into the dark waiting for sleep that never came, waiting for seven in the morning, waiting for the water to turn back on so he could wash and wash and wash. _Why did you do it? Why did you do this to me?_ After he remembered, he thought he understood some of it a little better. Some of it, though, he understood even less. They'd been friends, hadn't they? But he knew now how easy it was for them to not be.

***

The Monobear reappeared in the doorway after they finished their ramen. "Oowada-kun! You've been summoned to the headmaster's office!"

It didn't have a collar with it this time, Leon saw, and told himself it was stupid to be jealous ( _why_ , some small especially stupid part of him whined, _wasn't I good?_ ). And stupid to be jealous when Oowada got up and walked out behind it, just like that, no looking back. 

Leon deliberately turned his back to the closed door, returned to the guitar.

***

One hour passed. Two. Three. Nobody back at the door. Leon went over and tried it. Locked again. Had it been a test this morning, sending him back alone, leaving it up to him whether to close it? Testing for what?

He put on a favorite English Tutoring album, something Oowada could listen to when he got back. They'd called it English Tutoring, or alternately Studying English, because that was what they were supposedly gathered in Leon's room for. After all, he had the biggest private collection of English-language media in the school (even if he only beat Togami's because Togami preferred French). It was only logical (Fujisaki would say sweetly). They'd lounge, enrich their vocabulary, throw around travel plans. 

"They don't have baseball in England, do they?" Oowada had said. "Not as big there, anyway. They have what's-it-called. That other thing."

"Great!" said Leon. "And it's cricket. Croquet. One of those."

"Only," Fujisaki piped up, "if Kuwata-kun meets girls there who like athletes, they might not know what he's talking about..."

Leon made it five songs in before he turned off the stereo, flopped on his side and held a pillow over his face.

***

The clock read 9:02. Night Time in less than an hour. He took out the discreet box with the enema syringe and was glad Oowada wasn't there even to turn away from it. He reread the instructions more carefully than he'd studied anything in his life since he'd run that lint roller along that floor with shaking hands and feverish eyes in search of the slightest traitorous strand of red.

It paid off this time. The thing hurt going in but not that much with what was left of the lube. Not the worst, he could tell himself, and believe himself easy. He got through it with a clean floor and a trickle down his leg that washed away in the shower no problem. He washed his face again. He could do this. He'd been doing this a hell of a long time already. 

For a bit over a month, according to Oowada, less once you took into account however long he'd been doped up on a ventilator. Only a month?

Black undershorts, black jeans, mostly-black band shirt. He still hadn't stopped bleeding but this way at least the stains would hardly show. He couldn't find a pen, so he used the hair scissors to scratch two lines into the wall by his dresser. One for today, one for yesterday when Oowada arrived. From now on, he resolved, he'd mark off every morning. 

This time Enoshima came in herself, a giant bowl of popcorn balanced under one arm, a shopping bag from a Shibuya boutique dangling off the other. She found him stretched out, feet at the head of the bed and vice versa, occupying himself with the blank television screen because there was no way he could've concentrated on anything in the last minutes anyway. He'd guessed right, almost to the word, what she'd say about finding him something more exciting to do, ha ha smirk smirk. 

She surprised him a different way. The popcorn to start with, and this time she didn't get right away to the pulling up skirts, the pulling down pants. "We've had dinner," she announced, going to the shelf, "now let's have a movie. Just give it a _chance_ , Kuwata-kun, you'll find it enlightening." Soon there was the menu for _Trial 2: Chihiro Fujisaki_ on the screen again. She abandoned the bag for the moment and seated herself on the other side of the bed, the popcorn between them. Leon smelled butter and salt. She raised the remote and hit Play. 

Things he already knew ticked across the bottom of the screen like breaking news as they filed into the courtroom (had the wallpaper changed?). Two more crossed-out portraits filled the new gaps in the circle. And that – that was his face, there, between Celes and Fukawa (was she _really_...?). That face was curious and unafraid and very young. He still hadn't found anything to really be afraid of. 

Leon turned the face he had now toward the wall. Seconds later Enoshima reached over, took him by the chin, and turned him back. He got the point. 

Togami started right in on the Genocider Syo thing he'd set up. It was weird enough seeing Fukawa and remembering how she clutched her textbooks to her chest and how she started to really look people in the eye and smile because she was happy about something. _Then_ there was seeing her collapse and get back to her feet with her tongue lolling out and something he'd never once seen before gleaming in her eye. 

In the pandemonium that followed there were moments where it seemed like they were seconds away from settling on Fukawa and then on Togami. They _wouldn't_ , though. Because he'd seen them all on the cameras, hadn't he, and Oowada had been tossed down here, and that sucked for Oowada but it meant everyone else had to have gotten it right, everyone else was in one piece for now. Though with a serial killer running around... well, everyone knew about it now, so if they were to, say, get a note asking to meet in the middle of the night where no one could hear you...

She fished out popcorn kernel by kernel. Time passed and her chewing got noisier and she nudged the bowl closer and closer to his side of the bed. Leon hadn't touched it. It didn't seem right. But she wanted him to, he could tell, and he tried to figure if he could get away this time with not giving her what she wanted. It helped that he'd been allowed to get his own food this morning. When he wasn't hungry it wasn't hard to not eat on general principle. 

It wasn't hard, at least, until it reached the part where court was adjourned and Kirigiri (junior) led the others back to the crime scene, when she finally turned to him and reached over again to lay a hand on his shoulder. "Are you feeling all right, Kuwata-kun? Have you been eating too much?" He got that point too. She grinned when he reached in for a handful. Giving in wasn't that hard either, this time. It was good stuff, still a bit warm. He licked his fingers while Oogami freaked out and Monobear announced gleefully _Chihiro Fujisaki was a boy in a dress_!

He kept munching though he tasted less and less. Why not? He had a long way to go before he got close to fat. Storing up like a squirrel for the winter. It went on, mindless, even when Ishimaru began to scream, when the slot machine spun again, when he found out with the rest of them what happened with Daiya Oowada's motorcycle accident. 

"Naegi-kun wet the bed until fifth grade," Enoshima leaned over once more to whisper conspiratorially. "A _certain someone_ in that room's a nothing from Utsunomiya named Taeko Yasuhiro. Ishimaru-kun's gramps was a failtastic prime minister from a while back. I know, who gives a shit, right, but _he_ did. And our dear, dear Sayaka-chan gave a blowjob to the head of the idol factory. It's almost a pity someone cracked. Could you imagine the despair? But I'm a woman and also a bear of my word."

Two whole years. Only two years. No time for all of _anyone's_ secrets. From the two angles he'd seen Maizono it made more sense than he wanted it to. A lot of pervs in showbiz if the tabloids were even a tenth right. 

She'd gotten jump-started when she was a kid. Before she was Super High School Level she was Super Junior High School Level, even had a year at Super Elementary School Level. Leon had been one of a million eleven-year-olds with a crush. The best thing he could hope for her, besides that Enoshima had lied about the whole thing, was that the perv hadn't also been a pedo. 

At least she wasn't down here. At least being dead in such a stupid, stupid way was good for that much.

He swallowed. "What about me?" He could ask that. She'd want to tell him. 

"'Leon Kuwata's never once made it to home plate.' But we've taken care of _that_ , haven't we?"

Seconds passed. She kept watching him, expectantly. From the speakers Ishimaru screamed and screamed. He figured out it wasn't a rhetorical question but held off a bit longer in the hopes that it would turn into one. "Yeah, guess s–"

"Ooh!" She leaned forward. "You've gotta watch this part! I worked so hard on it!"

He paid full attention again. "This part" was the punishment. Oowada tied to a motorbike. The stage set of a demented carnival. The spinning tiger heads flanking the round metal cage. 

It went on like that and he remembered again when he was eleven, eight, younger, and always had the energy and the will to run every-damn-where and Mom called after him, laughing, not nearly as fast in heels, _If you don't slow down you'll turn into butter! That's right, they'll scrape you off the ground and use you to fry gyoza!_ They had a storybook of it from when Dad was his age, the little boy and the tigers, falling to bits. 

The cheery-colored tub popped out of the attached machine and he let fall his fistful of crumbled popcorn and clapped that hand over his mouth to hold back his retching. 

Enoshima's laughter would put hyenas to shame. He'd rather have hyenas. They might've eaten him but they didn't have the brains or the anatomy to sing out between peals, "Zombies don't exist, you fucking moron! Fiction, dumbass, _fiction_! Did you think they really saw those girls in half? If only!" 

Right. She was right about that much. A trapdoor, a magic trick. Oowada was alive. They were alive. 

Ishimaru couldn't know that. He screamed over the jaunty credits until the film ended completely.

***

She put away the bowl and reached for him. He was almost relieved. This was the routine. This time she didn't demand participation or enthusiasm. All he had to do was open his mouth to her, lie back where she pushed him, lie still while she peeled one layer then the next down his hips. She moved on top of him in the ways she'd done before. The only difference was his arms lay at his sides useless as ever. Sometimes when she did this he could stare so hard over her shoulder that he'd float up to the ceiling and wait there until it was over. This time he closed his eyes and opened a door in himself and went through and closed the door behind him and stayed there in the dark. Far away he breathed in-out and his cock twitched inside her.

***

She came before he did and climbed off. He made his way up out of himself when he realized it wasn't over. "Take it off," she said, for the second time that day, and he did, everything over the side. "Roll over," and he did, onto his cock still half-hard. "Hands up," and he spread his arms wide and reached forward and grabbed the headboard. The bed was wide enough he couldn't touch both bedposts at the same time and it was up to her to cuff his wrists in place. Once again she didn't fasten them there. Once again, too, she moved the rest of him into positions he knew to hold when she took her hands away. Legs sprawled as wide. Pillows under him to hold up his ass.

She was going to hit him now, he thought. She'd done it before while he was in the casts. She'd used his own belts to do it, the studded ones. Shown them to him before she started. Bleeding welts across his chest and then she turned him over and did his back and ass. Then she put her hands all over him smearing on antibiotics. He didn't wear belts anymore. 

"Let's try to be a bit more cooperative than this morning, shall we?"

More cooperative? _More_ cooperative? He'd only freaked when she was about to choke him to death, it was reflex, how could that count as uncooperative? No, he forgot, she counted whatever she wanted – 

Something slick and cold and too familiar, pressing forward down there. _Oh_. Of course it was that. After that box who knew how long ago ( _she_ did), the second box this morning, he only hadn't figured it out sooner because he didn't want to know. He pressed his face into the sheets. He'd found a cool patch and tried to focus on it warming against his skin to keep from focusing on anything else. 

She got her fingers inside him and twisted them around. As he clenched his teeth, clenched his hands on the headboard, he tried to make the rest of him go slack so it wouldn't hurt so bad. It did hurt, but not that bad. That bad and worse came when she took out her fingers and started pushing in the plastic cock. 

At first he still tried not to scream. But she didn't just leave it there, she kept moving it, pulling out shoving in, an irregular rhythm. No escape anymore; the pain chased him, unrelenting. He pushed his face down and managed to get a bite of the sheets and that muffled him for a while though the sounds that got out grew louder and louder. He thought later that he might have thought then _Give her what she wants, get it over with_ but if he had it wasn't in so many words; he was past words. He gave her what she wanted. He screamed until he ran out of voice and then he whimpered low in his throat as he tried to sink into the bed, smother himself, vanish.

***

It came out for the last time and hurt doing that too and she lay over him and whispered, "Tell me how much you loved it."

The fragments of his brain drifted together enough to parrot, "I loved it. I loved it." Those same fragments forming a nonsensical prayer, _don't make me mean it please don't make me mean it_. 

"Tell me whose bitch you are."

_Please please please please please._ "I'm your bitch."

"Good boy." She gave him a peck on the temple and withdrew, turning out the lights as she went. 

It was only then that he realized he was still hanging on to the headboard. That he'd kept his legs open the whole time, as wide as she'd left them. That she hadn't tied him at all tonight but he'd lain there and taken every bit of it without even trying to resist. Even before this he hadn't fought like he could've once his broken arms were healed, he'd always _let_ her tie him up, but now he didn't have even a single chain or rope to point to and say: I didn't stop her because I couldn't. 

There was the shock, he thought, tried to think. She could've electrocuted him in a split second. But he hadn't thought of it _then_. He hadn't thought: no, it's too risky to fight. It hadn't even occurred to him that he might fight. And if he'd had it in mind he could've seen an opening, a way to do it quick before she could put her hands together even once, he could've – 

Finally he found the exit, fell over the threshold, slammed the door.

***

The lights were back on, he could tell, though his eyes were still closed. He lay curled on his side, covers up to his neck. It hurt and hurt. It'd be a whole lot longer before he could sit down. He turned his face back into the mattress. He was still naked and his thighs were sticky. She'd torn him even worse. Was it going to be like the strangling, making him bleed again every time he started getting better?

The stereo on again, too. He recognized the song from one of his CDs. Another band from England. Rock but not punk rock. There'd been a buy-X-get-X-free in the foreign music section and he picked it up on a whim. It wasn't half bad. He'd put it on for Maizono; she said afterward that she liked it, and she proved it while it was playing with things like how she didn't once do that scandalized I'm-such-a-naughty-girl-for-even-hearing-this giggle when the singer cursed. _I really fucked it up this time, didn't I, my dear?_

__

***

"Oy, Kuwata. You up yet?"

Oowada was back. He sounded worried. Leon thought: How come? He thought: How'd I get under the covers? 

_Fuck_. 

He opened his eyes, turned his head back. His voice came out a wretched croak that gave the lie to his flimsy attempt to stay casual. "Yeah? Whaddaya want?"

Oowada limped over to that side of the bed to meet his eyes. More bruises on his face. He'd gotten fuck-all in the way of sleep, Leon could tell (he'd been worried, the day after, that someone would notice he was propped up by caffeine and adrenaline after "sleeping late" and guess what it meant. Maybe Kirigiri had, maybe it was a factor in her figurations). "Nothing fancy this time. Congee sound okay?"

"Sounds good." Home-with-the-flu food. So simple you could make it even if you were the one feeling like crap. Hot water. Rice. Salt. Whatever else you were up to throwing in. No problem. 

The little boiler bubbled audibly as it dispensed its stream of water. Oowada came back over with the bowl and a soup spoon. When Leon looked into it he recognized the seasonings from his favorite flavor of instant. "Thanks."

"No prob."

Oowada hovered while he ate. When he took the scraped-clean bowl Leon said "Thanks, Mom."

Oowada didn't pretend to laugh or be annoyed. "So you saw it."

Leon said, "So did you. Sucks about your bro." He knew he didn't sound as sympathetic as he would have if he'd heard it before Fujisaki died. Maybe someone who'd alreadygotten someone killed with their stupid could've thought twice before killing anyone else. 

He looked away. "Yeah. I... you know, right, if I could've not seen, I wouldn'tve... you know that, right?"

"I know that." Oowada had done what he did, but he wasn't _that_ kind of guy. Not so far. "The camera room."

"Right. That." His voice was rising, unnaturally loud. "You... you okay?"

For a moment at least he was angry again, really angry, better that than the still and bleak and hollowed. "The hell kind of question's that?"

"What the hell am I _supposed_ to say!"

Oowada yelled when he was nervous. Leon would've yelled back, if his throat let him. "Don't say jack then. Shut the fuck up. Leave me the fuck alone." He punctuated best as he could without yelling by yanking the blanket over his head. It had the helpful side effect of covering up that he'd burst into tears for the third time in as many days. 

One thing Oowada said was true. Fujisaki was more of a man than any asshole who'd ever ragged on him. It didn't matter how much or how easily Fujisaki cried; he was tougher than he looked and tougher than he thought. By the end of the two years one way or another pretty much everyone knew he had a dick but he'd worn puffy skirts and girls' gym shorts whenever the fuck he liked and hardly bothered being embarrassed about it. 

But that was the thing: Fujisaki _was_ tough. 

And one thing Oowada had done: he'd owned up. He'd owned up and he'd gone quietly to (what he thought was) what he had coming and he hadn't screamed once or begged for mercy he knew he wouldn't get. 

Had he screamed and begged once he found out what else was going to happen? Somehow Leon didn't think so. 

_Had_ the same thing happened? Had she done it to him? 

His anger went away too fast, left him feeling like what might've grown back in his hollowness had been scooped right out again. He waited a while tucked into himself, tried to keep quiet until around the time a reasonable person might think telling someone to shut up would expire. "Hey."

He'd waited but he wouldn't have blamed Oowada for being sarcastic anyway, for saying something like, what, can I talk now? All he said from somewhere across the room was, "Yeah?"

"You're not okay, are you?" 

"Fine," said Oowada and Leon knew and he _had_ to know it was a lie. "Nothing too bad so far. You know... if there's anything..."

"Sure. If there's anything."

***

He ran a fever the next few days, spent those days mostly in bed bleeding on sheet after sheet. Those days Oowada was called to the headmaster's office and limped back with even more bruises, with shopping baskets and clean sheets and bottles of pills and tubes of gel. He got water to wash down the pills, gave Leon the gel to put in himself.

Leon's imagination went into overdrive, with dreams blooming in new and strange forms. He'd stopped dreaming about the future; what was there left worth looking forward to that he wouldn't laugh at and snap himself out of? And dreaming about the past by itself hurt worse by the day because it made him think of all the things he'd used to look forward to, all the things he hadn't _known_ to look forward to or appreciate, and all the things he hadn't known that could've made things different. He dreamed instead about things he didn't even try to believe in, bright garish worlds and colorless peaceful ones, their contents impossible to pin down but pleasant or at least harmless. Places where he could disappear, places to sink into without a ripple. 

He took his showers when Oowada was away. He'd be the only person actually in the room, and he maybe hoped a little that she'd be so busy doing whatever she'd be doing to Oowada that he'd have the closest thing to privacy he'd ever have again. 

And when he was done with that he'd go find the one bottle of morphine in with all the antibiotics. Oowada had said _And there's this if you need it. Or want it. Whatever._ Apparently he'd asked for painkillers and she wouldn't let him have something simple like aspirin. All or nothing. It was tiny and plastered with dire warnings. He'd empty it out on a pillow and count the tablets and figure how many times over it could make everything stop. The count was the same every time. He hadn't taken one yet. If he did he didn't know if he could just take one. It had to mean something that he never did this in front of Oowada. 

And when he shaved with the safety razor sometimes he'd think about the spare blades, the box of sharp edges. He didn't think about this very often, though, or about the kitchen knives, or the sharp points of the hair scissors. He didn't want blood. What he wanted was to turn off, sleep without dreams, no terror, no pain. 

Except. Except.

He noticed on the fourth day afterward that Oowada had been adding to his marks on the wall; there were six now. He made the seventh. 

She started doing things to Leon again after the fever went down. She paid him less attention now, didn't bother so much with creativity. Upstairs he was a thing to get her off, downstairs he was a thing she could pose with for the camera – look into it, wave, call things at it. She made Oowada watch those times, he figured out soon, tied him up in front of the screen or something. Two-for-one deal. And after she left, Oowada would come back especially worried. He'd fumble around doing his best to offer some kind of support without humiliating them both in the process. 

While Leon was still in bed he'd asked which CD he wanted played next, would take a stack of them over to the bed and lay them out for comparison. He always fixed instant congee in the morning. He knew even less about cooking than Leon but he always worked to put together lunch and dinner when he was there for them, checked in to see if Leon had eaten those times when he wasn't. Even then Leon noticed Oowada's own plate wouldn't have nearly as much on it. 

Then Leon got out of bed and because he wanted to make things closer to even he started doing lunch and dinner those times Oowada was out. He hadn't gotten to go back to the kitchen yet so it was just the likes of jam sandwiches and peeled oranges and mugs of tea all in pairs and Oowada had to _know_ they had that stuff around, he was the one who brought it and left it, but Oowada always seemed startled to see it when he got back. "You don't have to," he'd say, or something like it.

" _You_ don't have to," Leon said, once. 

Oowada muttered something that sounded a bit like "Yes I do." He always ate it, and protested just as much the next time around. 

If Oowada had his own way he'd sleep, always, on the floor, covered with his battered coat. He wouldn't hear of switching night-to-night, said stupid shit like how Leon'd been there first and how (awkward mumbling) his health was worse, which became less true as time went on and Leon got better and Enoshima concentrated on her new plaything. After a while Leon figured out the trick was to say things like _get your ass in here already, I can't believe you're lazier than_ me, _can't even bother to go to bed_? With an unspoken _please_? Oowada would always climb in on the other side of the bed if it was put to him like he was doing Leon another favor. And he _was_ , Leon admitted to himself, just knowing someone else was there made him sleep better even if they never touched, and sometimes despite the size of the bed they did end up in a jumble of limbs during the night. That was nice while it lasted, though when Leon was awake enough he felt obligated to untangle himself and slide back over to his side. 

When Oowada cried it was always quiet, out of sight. Leon hadn't actually seen it in itself but eventually he'd noticed how he would all of a sudden turn his back (he noticed especially when they were in bed because the covers would move when Oowada rolled over), the way his shoulders twitched, and he could guess. 

Leon remembered: once it'd been a small revelation that the _gang leader_ in the classwas somehow more responsible than him. Well he was the leader after all, he had to do all that leading shit and getting the invite, whatever Hope's Peak admissions was thinking when they sent it out, meant he could do it damn well. Oowada talked about doing your duty and keeping your word.

And Leon remembered, too, watching what he'd done switching everything around, frying Fujisaki's ID. Even after _that_ he'd tried to keep what promises he still could. 

This kept Leon in his body, kept him from falling into himself and never coming up, from doing more than think about jumping out of himself and into the next life. The yearning to answer him like the friends they'd been. The need to at least say thank you for this part of all he'd done.

***

A Monobear delivered Oowada's motive DVD with sugary apologies for the delay. On the day of the tenth mark on the wall, when he was alone, Leon watched his own motive the whole way through. On the day of the eleventh mark he did it again, and established a routine. It hurt, but it was like what the coach used to call good pain (Leon had scoffed at that). Someday maybe he'd hit the maximum level of hurt and it would get better from there.

On the day of the fifteenth, she hadn't sent in a Monobear for either of them. That meant no grocery run, but they had enough in the room by now for them to eat decently all the same, at least for today. After Night Time began with no sign at all, Leon watched the DVD with Oowada in the room. 

Afterward Oowada ventured, "Your folks?"

"Yeah." 

The only folks Oowada had ever talked about were his brother. He didn't mention the rest even to complain. Leon had complained. Oh, he'd complained. On winter break they'd all stayed at Fujisaki's house for a bit, even crashed a couple nights at the Crazy Diamonds' hideout, but he was the only one who hadn't invited them over; they gave him birthday presents when they met up again at school. They said it made sense because he didn't live in Tokyo but of course they all knew. 

He wondered how many times Oowada had thought he was a giant fucking ingrate. 

Oowada didn't say that. He said, "So, um. What do they do? Don't think you ever said."

"Nah, I didn't. Dad's with this big chemical company. Mom played tennis until she got married." He only realized afterward they'd both used the present tense.

She hadn't shown him the _bodies_ ,after all. She'd just shown him a lot of ominous shit, proved she'd gotten her hands on their home videos, and _said_ they were dead. And until she proved it that was something faint and flickering to imagine. _He_ wasn't dead. And she'd get off on it, wouldn't she, showing them the son they'd always been determined would be a success had killed someone and was willing to let twelve more people die to save himself. 

They'd know that. But they'd be alive to know that. Maybe they'd even have time to have another kid who wasn't a total fuckup.

  
***

It was late at night and he knelt with the side of his face against her knee while she reviewed footage. She'd gotten off to her satisfaction a while ago but kept him in the camera room to play with his hair like other people doodled or filed their nails.

It wasn't that he wasn't afraid anymore. It was more that he no longer had the energy to be terrified every minute in her presence. Usually now when it came to things he knew he could do and live through it was just a dull background thrum of dread that got loud and sharp again when she decided to innovate. Tonight had been more of the same, and she'd used him hard enough that he was on the edge of nodding off; it was mainly that small remaining dread of what she might do once he did that kept him tensed and awake.

He heard Yamada talking and that opened his eyes. Yamada was one of the ones who stuck to the curfew. This usually meant shutting yourself alone in the dorm room, nobody to talk to, though sometimes Oogami and Asahina would have a sleepover. Togami paid it no attention; neither did Fukawa when she got that bloody glint in her eye. Kirigiri had started leaving her door open and sometimes she went wandering. Celes always locked her door before she wandered, and detached the massive black curls from her head. 

Yamada went on and on, pontificating about some manga or something. Maybe he'd popped in to lecture Kirigiri. Then Yamada _stopped_ talking, and Fujisaki answered him soft and sweet. That confused him a little, but not enough to raise his head. Probably she was trying to fuck with him again, he thought, playing back an old recording, something more interesting than Togami reading or Hagakure snoring.

  
***

Another morning. The twenty-first mark. Oowada staggered in, the basket swinging on his arm. He handed Leon the new DVD without a word. Leon didn't need another word to know.

 _Trial 3: Hifumi Yamada and Kiyotaka Ishimaru_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Japan, S sometimes goes above A in the A-F ranking system. You see this in some video games. Speaking of video games, Guitar Freaks is the Japanese predecessor to Guitar Hero.

They sat on the end of the bed and looked at the menu screen. Play. Special Features. Now, Scene Selection. It had taken maybe twenty minutes for them to get to this point and they might stay there for another twenty. 

They'd had to decide, first, whether to watch it at all. Thing was – they'd talked it out, finishing each other's sentences – even if Enoshima didn't make them have another movie night, whoever did it would be in with them soon. It was best to know. 

"Um," said Leon. "D'you want to look at the What Happened first, or...?"

"Let's... let's just see the trial for now. See _why_."

***

He hadn't been that close to those two even in the lost years. What closeness he had was through association. They were both associated with Naegi, of course. Yamada's other big association involving Leon had been with Fujisaki, mostly over computer stuff. Fujisaki would shift in his seat when Yamada called him things like cute or adorable or Chihiro-tan and ease him onto another subject. Video games were a favorite. Sometimes when they were four and feeling optimistic they'd sit down and plug in all the controllers that would fit in the console of choice and try gaming together. Sooner or later it'd turn into a mess. Leon mostly just mashed buttons and picked whatever looked flashiest. Yamada memorized all the strategy guides and knew all the right tactics and exploits which pissed him off even more when Leon or Oowada got lucky. Oowada tried hard but kept running his character off cliffs or making it blow itself up. Fujisaki knew all the strategies too but didn't take them nearly so seriously and eventually when the yelling started he'd giggle at how ridiculous the argument nearly always was (when you stepped back and took a good look at it) instead of fluttering at the periphery pleading please stop fighting. And sometimes they were five and Ishimaru would take a turn, furthering his serious-business study of pop culture in relation to the process of friend-making, and the clusterfuck would get even bigger.

Ishimaru he'd known better, but they'd never been exactly buddy-buddy either. It was only after clashing with and subsequently hooking up with Oowada that he'd even started to get something like a real life. Ishimaru was all about working hard every minute every day. Ever let yourself relax and coast along one second, was his view, and you'd coast right off a cliff the next second. They were natural enemies, or at least natural eye-rollers and indignant-reprimanders. But for their friends' sake they could shut up. 

Ishimaru invited them to spend a few days over winter break, too, but you could tell he was only saying it because it was the done thing. They all could tell so they let him off the hook quick and he looked relieved. Leon was relieved too. The way he figured it, people didn't go uptight on their own, not the same way they could slack off on their own; the natural condition of mankind was slacking off. For someone to be wound up like Ishimaru, something had to make them that way. Imagining what could do that gave him the creeps. 

He knew enough to know Ishimaru would be appalled if he found out anyone was sorry for him. Leon could almost hear him exclaim with a straight face, _Surely there are starving children in China who deserve it far more!_

***

"Hagakure?" said Oowada. "Seriously? _Hagakure_?"

Leon could've said that the last two times, too: Seriously? _Maizono_? Seriously? _Oowada_?

(Seriously? _Fukawa_?)

(Who stood there now with that _look_ )

(Seriously? _Enoshima_?)

Then Celes started laying out the evidence and they inhaled near-simultaneously at the sight of the scrawl on the blueprints. Hagakure's fancy handwriting had seemed weird for a weirdo like him, and his explanation had been even weirder; it was therefore easy to remember and compare. It hadn't been Naegi, either, and it hadn't been Fukawa. It was _never_ the first guy to get fingered, was it? 

If not him, then who? Well, Celes's game face wasn't working so good. Look at the way she tried to shut down Naegi over something as small as a dolly. Leon was an expert in not even trying and that was clearly trying too hard. 

Soon enough it all came together again. Her mask slid further and further askew as the evidence lined up. Sometimes it came off altogether when she shouted (she'd yelled like that a lot of times, those two years. It happened less often as those years passed; when she stopped arranging herself so precisely the breaks weren't as dramatic). He'd had a look like that on his face, once. He'd yelled like that once, like yelling enough would make it true. And knowing what it was like to cling to the edge of a cliff, he started to feel sorry for her but –  
 _  
You really did feel like killing her, didn't you_. 

– he shut that down. Not just because she'd said that, and put into words the simplest explanation for all they'd found (he hadn't even tried to tell them what happened, had he, he knew they'd never believe him and it didn't matter to the one who was calling the shots). At least not _only_ because of that. Because it was such a careful setup, the notes and the hammers and the costume and everything. No way it was an accident, no way she and Yamada prepared all that just for an epic prank on Hagakure that went terribly wrong.

Celes started shouting about Yamada's last words (he'd _had_ last words? Real last words? Wasn't he dead for real the second time they found him?). _Yasuhiro_ , Leon heard, and he caught on to _that_ bit straight away even while Hagakure freaked out so hard he forgot everything else that meant he didn't do it. "She said," he whispered, "someone else's secret was their name's Taeko Yasuhiro." 

" _Oh_ ," said Oowada. "And Yamada knew? But why the hell'd she tell him?"

"Good question."

She could have told him _before_. She'd been tight with Yamada, or as tight as she got with anyone. He didn't think she'd have told him this time around, not when she'd been okay with killing him. Yamada could've made things a whole lot simpler by just calling her the name she used, but he'd been whacked upside the head with a hammer, hadn't he, good reason not to think straight.

Maybe Yamada, too...

It was over. She owned up. Her explanation referred a lot to some inside thing that everyone but the Monobear seemed to get (he looked to Oowada; Oowada had no idea either). Something she'd claimed to Yamada that Ishimaru stole. Or made her steal. Because supposedly he'd – he'd – _what_. 

Oowada said it out loud. " _What?_ The _fuck_!"

***

He started to feel a bit sorry for her again when a Monobear set the kindling at her feet alight. She was going to live, he knew that, but was she going to come out of this burned like he'd come out of his broken? And she was starting to sweat in the flames but she was still so calm or looked it, as calm as Oowada had been.

Then the fire truck zoomed onto the set and they both burst out laughing. It was probably horrible of him, Leon thought, howling wild and crazy as he did, until his ribs ached, falling sideways onto Oowada as Oowada fell on him, holding each other up. But not as horrible as it could've been if it was what it looked like. There was another trapdoor or something. She'd be alive as they were. Unless she wasn't and Enoshima was going to toss in her singed and shattered corpse to wrack them with some more guilt.

***

He dug in his things and eventually came up with the headset he'd used with his smartphone and his handheld. He gave that to Oowada, who turned away and got started on a new savefile of Project: Zombie while Leon watched the What Really Happened, one hand on fast-forward.

He nearly hit it at the start, when the black screen lingered. Then he heard the footsteps, something like the metal scrape of an opening locker, the click of a keyboard. Still no picture.

Fujisaki's voice: " _Good evening, Celes-san!_ "

Click-click-click. 

" _Mm-hm! I can do that! Starting... now_!"

Click-click-click. Beep-click. The locker-scrape again. More footsteps. 

The picture came on with Celes ringing the bell at Yamada's door. He paused, rewound, reached over and plucked the headset off Oowada's head. "You'd better see this. Hear this."

***

It couldn't be Fujisaki himself – they established that fast. There was no way Fujisaki could still be alive. Oowada knew this because... because right after it happened (he murmured, looking away) he'd searched for a sign that it might, miraculously, be the case. Up close and personal. Not like with the two of them. Enoshima had tricked the others into thinking she'd churned up Oowada past recognition like a storybook tiger, and not even Kirigiri wanted to investigate the alleged tub of butter. Before that, nobody wanted to go close enough to the bloody mess of Leon's body to see he was still breathing.

("But if we _had_... we could've, the gate was open...")

("Probably would've killed me for real," said Leon. "Something like that. Don't sweat it.")

"Hey," said Oowada, "before the... before. He was working on the, whatsit, the robot, no, the AI, wasn't he?"

"Now that you mention it," said Leon. The first year it'd been top-secret, under contract, but Fujisaki talked about it more the second year because the company he'd signed the contract with had probably exploded. He'd spent a lot of time on it in the second year; not many distractions then, though his friends had done their best to provide some when needed. Near the end he'd been getting really excited about it, too. 

Voice input was one of his side projects. He'd taken recordings of everyone for it to process, to help it understand people who all sounded different. Making it talk out loud and sound like a person itself was another side project. Its default voice, the one who read out A-I-U-E-O for it to mimic, was Fujisaki's. 

"There was a laptop," said Oowada. "In the library. He took it, no one else wanted it, it wouldn't turn on. If anyone could get it on..."

"You think he found it? What he was working on? But then... wouldn't he have found out...?"

"Maybe she fucked with it. Enoshima. Turned back the clock, wiped out its memory, that kind of thing. You think she could've done that?"

"Good point. She might've." When you thought about what it would take to orchestrate this whole deathtrap, even if her sister and who knew who else helped her with it... there wasn't much he'd say for sure she _couldn't_ do, except maybe not be a psychopath.

"If he did find something... y'know what he was like. 'Specially back then. He wouldn'tve wanted to show anyone until he was finished figuring it out. And with the cameras and everything, probably the safe thing to do, sitting on it..." 

"But she knows," said Leon. The recording was proof enough of that, even if the Monobear at the trial pretended to be clueless.

"Yeah. She knows. Shit. But he was smart, Fujisaki, really smart, so maybe..." Oowada glanced at the nearest camera and stopped talking.

Back to the What Really Happened: Yamada _had_ remembered. The blow to the head, the dying, whatever it was had tripped the switch to open the locked chambers of his brain too late to do jack.

Had Fujisaki remembered? Had he had time to remember? Had Ishimaru remembered? Had Maizono?

Celes would remember, if the trend kept up.

***

A pair of Monobears arrived around noon with a fancy matched set of luggage, two headless limbless mannequins, and a third dresser, this one still flat-packed with assembly instructions. They also brought toolkits. One of them was sealed in plastic wrap; it must have been Oowada's. The other one Leon left on the pile near the door where the Monobears had heaped everything they brought. She could put together her own fucking dresser, they weren't her goddamn butlers. And she could have the toolkit too; he never wanted to touch it again. Still no new bed. They tried not to think about it until they had to.

Celes herself arrived soon after, walking in behind another Monobear. She wore the same black dress, with singed lace from the fire that managed to reach her, tattered black stockings without shoes. She had those giant clip-on curls off too; she'd only ever taken them off outside her room for gym. Her face, though, was still on and who knew what moved behind it.

"Now then," chirped this one, "let's give your new roommate a good old Hope's Peak welcome!"

"Hey," said Leon, flat as a pancake.

"Hey," said Oowada, managing to go even flatter. 

Celes raised her hand to her mouth, covered her fleeting smile.

***

They pretended to ignore each other for the next hour. Celes ignored the unassembled dresser, too. Oowada started over on Project: Zombie and Leon talked him through the tutorial and the opening levels (Fujisaki's trouble with helping with games had been he was just such a natural at them it was hard for him to explain how he could pull off such-and-such past pointing helplessly at the strategy guide; Leon had the same problem when people asked him for baseball tips). Behind him he could hear her going through her luggage. She came into their field of vision with the mannequins, which she set up near the bathroom corner. She went and came back with a large black sheet, which she arranged over and between them into a makeshift privacy screen. It was pretty neat but Leon wasn't in a state to say so.

She proceeded to make use of it. Leon wondered why, after all this, he could still feel himself flush when he heard the shower run on the other side and could guess this meant she had her clothes off. This was the normal way to react, wasn't it? He'd probably lose that too, after a while. 

After the water went off a blow dryer went on. A while after that stopped she emerged again, in a fresh dress, everything back in place but her stockings and her hair, which she'd styled in something not _quite_ as big and fancy. He couldn't hold that against her; he'd taken the same kind of time once he could, though by now Oowada's hairstyle had entirely collapsed from neglect. Plenty of other things to hold against her.

***

Night Time. Leon lay under the covers with the handheld, playing his own save, waiting to be tired. Celes went to his side of the bed (on the other side, Oowada lay on his back for a spot of ceiling-staring). "Excuse me," she said, like you would to ask for directions. "Would you mind terribly moving over, Kuwata-kun?"

Simple as that. Saying no would make him feel like a dick even though there was no one here to think he was. He settled for scooting toward the other side, enough to put some distance between them without crowding Oowada. That and saying, trying to be just as simple, not even looking at her, "Sure thing, Yasuhiro- _san_."

She climbed in just as she was. Her skirts brushed against Leon's bare leg. At least he had shorts on, and a T-shirt. At least there hadn't been blood for a week. He decided he could let himself move a little closer to Oowada. As he did she said, "I see you've learned manners. You may make Rank C yet."

He tried to suppress his flinch and concentrate on the game. He remembered her ranking system, F through C. They'd never once heard of a B, let alone an A or an S. It'd turned into a joke with the boys once Naegi and Yamada let it slip. _I'm a Super High School Level Rank F-Double-Minus!_ they'd announce with mock pride while she gave them the finger. 

"Shut the fuck up," said Oowada.

"I see _you_ haven't. I wasn't speaking to you, Oowada-kun."

The zombies were dancing. On these levels you were supposed to match the rhythm. He was good at that part like he'd been good at DDR, at Guitar Freaks. Reflexes and so on. Hey, Kuwata, the guys used to say at his old high school, slapping him on the back, maybe you should be an _idol_ , maybe you should start a _band_ , and laugh at themselves ha ha as _if_. 

" _Shut the fuck up_."

"Or else?" She was leaning over him to face Oowada; her shadow fell on the screen. "Enlighten me. What is my incentive, pray tell? Are you offering not to harm me?"

– circle-square-circle-triangle-X-X-square – 

"No, I forget. You'd never harm a woman, would you? Oh no. That's Kuwata-kun. You'd only harm me if I were a transvestite."

Leon got up so abruptly that she had to move hastily back to keep from colliding with him. He turned over, sat up, restarted the thoroughly botched level. If Oowada snapped he'd be more conspicuously between them and might fare better than Naegi had that second first day. If Oowada actually hit her, broke another old promise, that'd be another thing for him to beat himself up about. 

Nobody made another sound besides Oowada's forcibly measured breathing. Meanwhile on his second try Leon got a score of a hundred eighteen, a solid rank S. Next came another puzzle level. Put the tape on the chainsaw, stick the pins in the doll. 

Halfway through that Celes's skirts moved and she sat up beside him, brushed against his arm. At the edge of his sight he glimpsed her leaning in ever so slightly, craning her neck to see the screen. He got some more petty satisfaction from angling himself just so and tilting it out of her view. She tilted a bit in turn, but soon cut the losses to her dignity and instead leaned back against the headboard with half-closed eyes. Listening to the soundtrack, maybe. Good music for a game (Fujisaki had dug it out and ripped it into MP3s which Leon promptly added to his playlist). He thought of retrieving the headset but decided it was too much effort.

***

When he finally started to blink and yawn Oowada wasn't quite asleep either, and was willing to pass the handheld over to safety on top of his dresser without Leon needing to give up his place in the middle and awkwardly wriggle back in afterward. He slept deep and dreamless until Celes smacked him in the face.

It took a while for him to come up entirely after he felt the blow, curses stumbling garbled from his mouth. He kept trying to form them, trying to get them to come out right, and immediately after they finally did he was awake enough to realize he'd grabbed an arm in a lacy sleeve inches before his eyes, that his fingers were pressing in tight, and beside him lying against him Celes was making a high wounded sound in her throat. 

His fingers flew open and she drew her arm back just as fast. "Sorry," he could say now, head turned in the dark, and kept saying it, too fast "Sorry sorry sorry –"

She shuddered; the high keen ended in a gasp. She drew the rest of her away from him. It took a bit longer for her breathing to steady. Once it did she cut off his babbling with a crisp "Apology accepted." 

Silence again. Eventually, sleep again.

***

When he woke up a second time Celes was gone. Too easy to guess where. Oowada was still asleep. Leon scratched mark twenty-two and took his shower behind Celes's sheet. Afterward he forgot Oowada was still there and went to the cluster of medicine bottles, glanced quickly over his shoulder a second later. Oowada was still in bed. It didn't matter, though, whether he was or not. The little bottle of morphine was gone. Too easy, too, to guess who took it.

Maybe, he thought, she was going to crush it in with the food she brought back and overdose them all. It was the kind of thing she'd be into, wasn't it? A beautiful death or whatever – she'd probably say it in French. Prettier than Joan of Arc or Marie Antoinette. 

The thought didn't particularly worry him. Some part of him still wanted to live, or at least didn't object to it, but not that much. If they all died, so what? So much was out of his hands already. There were worse ways to go. Sure, he could think of reasons to be worried (Oowada, for one), but that was the thing, he had to think about them. 

He got dressed and sat down with an apple from yesterday's haul. He was about halfway through it when applause started from every corner of the room and he collapsed across the table, twitching, gasping when he could, one hand sticky with juice from the apple he kept a death grip on. The shock went on-off-on-off with every clap, so fast it might've been one long shake in his bones that blotted out past and future. _Why?_ he thought at first, _why?_ – but he soon had to devote every thought he could slip in to _breathe_! _Breathe_! and not long after he stopped thinking at all.

***

He breathed and breathed through his nose, taking it all in. The cloth in his mouth, the tape over it. More cloth over his eyes, knotted behind his head. Metal on his wrists, cuffed behind his back. Cold concrete against his cheek, his legs, cold air over his body. His jeans were gone but someone had put on his Sid Vicious necklace.

Nearby, someone else made muffled noises under another gag. Oowada? 

Why? What had changed, all of a sudden? Maybe Enoshima got tired of the little half-life they'd scraped up, decided to make things worse like she'd shaken things up in the world above with the DVDs and the secrets and the ten billion worthless yen. But she'd thrown in Celes only yesterday. Wouldn't it take longer than that to get bored? Maybe she'd expected Oowada to completely freak after what they'd seen about Ishimaru, what Celes said about him, what Celes had done to him. Freak enough that she could get him to hit a girl, that they'd have an out-and-out brawl she could watch with popcorn. Maybe she got crazy-pissed when it didn't happen. 

Maybe it was something Celes had done after a Monobear took her, something he hadn't seen. Maybe something to do with the morphine. 

_Thump_. A ways away, _thump-thump-thump_ , heavy things landing. 

Leon slid himself sideways across the floor, best as he could, until he collided with someone else. Oowada, he thought. Oowada grunted inquisitively; Leon made what he hoped was an affirmatory noise back. Somewhere past Oowada another chain rattled on the floor. Celes, it had to be. 

Footsteps. Conversation not quite intelligible yet. Men's voices, ones he didn't know. The Monobear voice. That he did know. 

He waited, trying not to shake, and made out: "Do we have to climb back up the chute?"

"Oh no no no no! Once you're finished here, I'll show you our special exit! Can't risk the brats getting near it, you know."

Man two – he tried to keep count – said, "Okay, sure, which brats? We get to pick? I want the one with the _rack_."

Man three: "We gonna be live on TV?" 

"You'll see soon enough. Right now, in fact. _Voila_!"

Leon raised his head as though, if he looked hard enough, he could see through the blindfold. Oowada shifted beside him. 

Man two: "Hey, hey, aren't these the –"

Man four: "Guess that makes sense, didn't see the body for the last two –"

Man one: "But the first boy. We saw the body then, didn't we?"

The Monobear: "And there you have it. Your _exclusive_ peek behind the scenes! Presenting for your personal entertainment Leon Kuwata, Super High School Level Baseball Player! Mondo Oowada, Super High School Level Gang Leader! Aaand Celestia Whatsherface, Super High School Level Gambler! Or should I say, ahem, _Taeko Yasuhiro_?"

"But the whatsit," said man four, "the _victims_ , they're not...?"

"Alas, they are no longer with us. All homicides committed by the student bodyhave been entirely authentic. Otherwise this entire enterprise would have been without further purpose than that of your run-of-the-mill mind-rotting reality show! Any joker can _fake_ a murder!"

They'd been coming closer, the whole time. Now one of them put a foot out and against Leon's chest. He dropped his head back to the floor, shut his eyes behind the blindfold, tried to play dead or at least completely uninteresting. 

"This is bullshit," said man two above him. It was probably his foot bearing down now. He sounded only a little bit older than them while on the other end man one sounded like a salaryman gone out of his mind. "Wish it was that hot idol chick finished the job." Down to him, "Had to fuck it up, didn't you, fucker?"

The gag kept him from saying anything he'd regret. Wasn't as if he'd ever impress them with his shining wit anyhow. 

"Survival of the fittest," said man three. "Which is why we've got a couple of punks and Vampire Girl here instead of the pop princess or the kogal or even that little trap." That got an angry sound from Oowada and that got him laughed at. "Really too bad."

"Could've been worse," said man four. "Could've been stuck with Fatso the fanboy."

He remembered: one of the last things he'd said to Yamada was accusing him of whacking off to the girls' trash. 

"I'll tell you what," said the Monobear, "If you're not satisfied with these little shits, I'll arrange a little something from the school's private morgue. If you're into that. Sickos."

They wouldn't feel it anyway, Leon told himself, and if you throw up now you'll just choke on it and even if she cares about that she might not notice until you're dead. 

He tried not to feel it either. So Enoshima'd gotten guys in to do it for her. So now they could stick genuine flesh-and-blood dicks in him. Big deal. No way they could be as inventive as she was. More of the same. He knew he could live through that. It'd hurt but he'd live. 

One thing, though, he hadn't lived through before. Enoshima had made Oowada watch what she did to him. He'd known that. But she'd never made him watch Oowada. 

Technically he wasn't watching now. But his ears told him enough, told him too much. A small cold blade cut his shirt and shorts from him (a crazy thought: _if she ruins all my clothes will she get me new ones?_ ). The others resisted. Oowada tried to curse behind his gag. Celes screamed behind hers, and if the scream was frightened it was ten times as much enraged. She must've had her legs free too, and used them: "Fuck!" screamed one man back, distorted, "the cunt got my –" Someone kicked, shoe to flesh, again and again (she had to have kicked hard, with bare feet). Celes's screaming stopped, and the cursing soon after.

Any other time he would've screamed too, the moment he felt the urge, held back nothing, screamed them along until they were satisfied. But knowing the others were here kept him quiet. Stupid time to try to be proud, he knew, they'd both heard him scream before, heard him beg before. But when things started going inside him he did his best not to make a sound. Nearby Oowada grunted, Celes let out little gasps. They were trying, too. Another crazy thought: didn't want to let them down, didn't want them to think he (thought he) had it worse. He closed his eyes again, tighter. The blindfold was getting damp.

But the thing was, when they all managed to keep themselves from making noise that just made the people doing these things more intent on _making_ them make noise. When one of them tore the tape from Leon's mouth and pulled out the cloth he was stupidly glad for the split second before they pried his jaw open and shoved a cock down his throat. He screamed then, or tried to, struggled so that the cuffs bit into his wrists. The man in his ass kept going. He jerked back and forth between them and tried desperately to convey that he couldn't breathe, _really_ couldn't breathe, in some faint hope that would matter to them. "Bitch," one was saying, "suck it, bitch –" and not far enough away Oowada was trying to yell again. 

They finished, one and then the other and he coughed come onto the floor while more seeped down his shaking legs. Someone else wanted a go once done with Celes, he could hear it, but before that he opened his mouth and coughed out words that made no sense at all. "It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay."

"Fuck is he yammering about?"

"Dunno, think he's lost it?"

They spared him the second round a little while longer after the third man finished. To puzzle over him, to laugh at him. It was good for that much. Then they lost patience. In between, though, and in his head during, the words kept spinning, the flimsy delusion, the transparent lie, a sinking boat in a stormy sea. _Gonna be okay. Gonna be okay._ He couldn't hear the others anymore. It spiraled out into eternity but the clinging tenacious piece of brain did its best to keep pace.

***

"It's all going to be okay," he said, at the ceiling looking down. The room with the concrete floor was dimly lit and nondescript because he had no idea what it really looked like. His body was down there, being used. The people using him, too, were fuzzy. They wore Monobear heads like the rioters on TV. The clearest thing in the room was the Monobear, looking on. The Monobear couldn't see him up here.

His body was still breathing, and still bleeding, and still crying, but that didn't matter for now.

"It'll all be okay in the end," said Fujisaki, cross-legged beside him. 

"It all comes out in the wash," said Ishimaru, across the room, nodding sagely. That sounded like a life motto but not the kind he was into. 

Fujisaki and Ishimaru. Further away, Yamada and Ikusaba (Ikusaba with her own short dark hair, the wolf tattoo she'd worn with something like pride), Maizono on his other side.

"There's no way we all ended up in the same place," he said, because sharing an afterlife with Yamada and Ikusaba, even Maizono, sure, he could see that, but the other two?

"Isn't there?" said Fujisaki, and laid his hand on Leon's wrist which wasn't bleeding up here. "Are you so sure?"

He was imagining it all, of course. He could imagine them saying anything he wanted, ten-yen absolutions by the bucket. But he couldn't bring himself to imagine Fujisaki turning away from him, gentle Fujisaki finding him lower than the insects. 

Maizono wasn't looking at him. She was singing low and soft and the song kept changing. The love songs shooting up the charts, ones every guy could imagine were for him. Happy Birthday in English, like she'd sung for all of them in her favorite ruffled stage dress, like she'd sung for his eighteenth birthday while they stared longingly at the nearest barricaded window.

He'd been planning to sing it back to her for her birthday in July. Was it July? It could be. He had no idea how long they'd been out between Enoshima taking over and Enoshima waking them up for opening ceremonies. No way to tell. 

Would it've been better or worse if he'd kissed her, even once?

  
***

At the end of eternity he collapsed where they dropped him, still mouthing "Gonna be okay." At some point they'd taken off the cuffs so he could give one of them a handjob. The blindfold was soaked. Inside and out his throat hurt and hurt; one of them had come up all over again with the idea of choking him with the necklace. But he was alive and he could hear the others breathing and the Monobear was leading the men away.

He crawled in the dark, ignored his scraped knees, until the hand he stretched tentatively out landed on bare chest that shuddered beneath. "It's me," he tried to say, but what he formed in his head wasn't what came out. It seemed to reassure Oowada anyway. Leon lay down again, on his side, waiting for what would come next. 

He waited until he heard the machinegun rattle, the sound when the bullets actually _hit,_ the startled cries that ended in gurgling. He jerked his head up, and doing that reminded him there was nothing stopping him from taking off the blindfold. 

The first thing he saw once he did was the boxes, cardboard, wood crates, stacked high. He looked up to the scattered fluorescents among the exposed ceiling beams and his imagination threw out the idea that Enoshima had spirited them all to a generic abandoned warehouse (there'd be more of those around now). The boxes were all labeled. Big ones: flour, sugar, rice, salt. Smaller ones in smaller piles: pastries, fruit, vegetables. Inside one he glimpsed the bright color of a doughnut box. Then nonedibles: toilet paper, toothpaste, that kind of thing. Stuff he remembered started to run short over that year. Their consternation when they really realized all that didn't just materialize in the bathroom, spontaneously generate on store shelves. Stuff they'd taken for granted, second time around. 

Then the bodies. All four fallen over each other in a growing pool of blood. They _had_ had Monobear heads with them, but weren't wearing them; a couple had been torn from their hands and lay a little ways off, bullet-pocked and bloodied. The gun mounted above a closed door. 

A chute, he remembered. A delivery chute. One-way. 

Celes said, "Oh."

He looked over. She was sitting up, as naked as he was, as they all were by now, her knees drawn up, a free hand to her mouth, her eyes very large. She had some scrapes too but one thing he hadn't expected at all was the blood smeared on her face, now on her fingers. She swiped the back of her hand across her lips, leaving them slightly cleaner. When she rasped, "I _see_ ,"there was blood in her mouth, like she'd been drinking it. 

"And do you like what you see, Yasuhiro-san?" 

The Monobear toddled over to them holding one of its disembodied heads. "As headmaster, I am always attentive to the needs of my pupils, even disruptive little bastards who try to sneak me overdoses in the tea. You wanted them dead, didn't you? Such uncouth ruffians laying hands on an innocent if gothic flower such as yourself? You wanted dear Ishimaru-kun dead, after all, so I used my logic. I said to myself, 'Esteemed and clever headmaster Monobear, what would she want for sorry sons of bitches who'd actually _done_ it?' And I said to myself, 'She'd want them dead as doornails!' And hey presto, now they are! I hope this has been instructive for you boys!"

He could tell now what Enoshima meant. Celes had tried to kill her, she was saying, had grabbed the second chance to graduate, and they'd all paid for it. Reminding them about Ishimaru was just icing. Were they pissed off now? Pissed off enough to push Oowada over the edge, enough to make Leon do something that could never be called an accident?

Oowada was still cuffed but he managed to sit up, to growl " _Bullshit_."

"Indeed," said Celes, running a finger through a strand of hair. Her voice was cracked but it held together. "You never meant to let them live, did you, Enoshima-san?" She said _Enoshima-san_ like someone else would say _Enoshima you bitch I hope you die in a fire_. "If they were allowed to leave after you and they had their entertainment, there would be people in the outside world who knew we had survived. Even if they were loyal to you, the information could be obtained by those who weren't. That would spoil your illusion, wouldn't it? And really, I believe the boys hate me enough, there's no need to manufacture more reasons for it."

***

They didn't hate her, though, or not as much. Maybe Celes had expected that when she said it, that going through the same thing together would soften them toward her. It didn't matter.

He thought later that once, long ago, he would've run, or tried to. Run to find the chute where the men had dropped in, run and jumped and scraped his fingers bloody trying to climb up it. Maybe he'd have decided a tiny chance was better than none. Maybe he'd have thought nothing but _get out get out get me out of here._ Just then he didn't contemplate it for a moment. They found the key and unlocked Oowada and limped behind the Monobear back to the room. The cell. The broken excuse for a sanctuary.

They lined up for the shower after a brief dance of you-go-first-no-you. Oowada managed to anchor himself last. Celes went, then Leon. He knew by now that scrubbing himself raw didn't make things any better but it was only knowing Oowada was waiting out there that kept him from staying until his fingertips looked like raisins. 

On the table, the exposed parts of Leon's apple had gone brown. Something to do with oxygen, he thought he remembered. He picked it up and tried to get himself to eat it until Celes plucked it from his hand and dropped it in the garbage with a _thunk_. 

By the clock it was only two in the afternoon but they all flopped into bed, same order, Leon in the middle. Oowada got up first, a few hours later, and without a word he started putting together Celes's dresser. 

While he was off doing that Celes said, quite simple, dropping bait in the water, "Yamada-kun remembered."

"Guess concussions can do that in the right place," said Leon, turning his head. "Like in the cartoons. You told him, right? Before?"

"I didn't know how he knew," said Celes. She turned toward him as well. With the light on he could see the new scab on her lower lip, where she'd bitten down. "I thought perhaps that he was deluded enough to protect me to the end. It makes far better sense now. You _can_ call me that, if you like."

"S'long as it's not some shit like Magical Sparkling Vampire Princess I can call you whatever you want."

"That's very kind of you," she said, failing to sound sarcastic.

A while later he slid over and reached for Project: Zombie. This time he let her watch.


	5. Chapter 5

Enoshima continued to call them up one at a time. Sometimes one after the other, and she'd truss them up in Data Processing. Fuck around with each of them, go down to have fun with the third. Leon could close his eyes but not his ears; when she wasn't there and he wasn't gagged he'd sing at the top of his lungs, wherever the top was at the time, to drown out what he could. She didn't concentrate on Celes as intently as she had on Oowada. She started letting them into the kitchen in pairs and then all at once. Once, right after Night Time started, they cooked a late dinner and ate it at their leisure. They rolled out and folded their own gyoza, rows and rows like a goddamn gyoza army, a recipe from Utsunomiya ("My grandmother's," said Celes like she hoped they wouldn't hear, except then why did she say it in the first place), fried and ate some and left the rest in the freezer. When they checked back two days later most of the frozen ones were gone. Leon liked to think it was the others who found and ate them, not Enoshima. That they'd left it for them to enjoy like benevolent spirits. He didn't say it out loud so he couldn't be proven wrong. He wouldn't say they were all friends but it was the kind of peaceful communal life Enoshima had liked to claim could've been theirs if they just had more moral fiber.

Leon knew something of how to play to her now, knew how to bring his ordinary fear to the surface and cringe as she liked. How to crawl in a collar and kneel and lick her boots and communicate in nothing but barks and whimpers until she got tired of it, obeying without hiding how thoroughly humiliated that made him. How to look like he was trying hard to mean it when he smiled or kissed or was fucked. _Loved it_ , he'd say when prompted, forcing a shambling zombie kind of life into his voice, the memory of being happy. _Best sex I ever had_ (only sex he'd ever had). He knew she wouldn't like it anymore if he ever came to really mean it, and thought of trying to polish up his meager acting skills except he didn't know what would happen to him if she lost interest completely, if she'd leave him alone or if she'd toss him out the one way out there was. 

And in return – if it was in return... take the very early morning of day twenty-three, when she had the elevator take him directly to the kitchen and told him to make them breakfast. Had that been what she'd told Celes yesterday? He cooked with hands shaking so bad he almost cut himself chopping, imagining her making all kinds of complaints and every one another excuse to hurt him. Thinking back he supposed he scared himself enough she didn't need to scare him more. He brought the trays up to Data Processing and miraculously didn't drop them on the way.

She'd insisted beforehand they eat the same thing, scooped from the same platters, Leon guessed to make it less likely that if he'd managed to hide the morphine or get his hands on something else he could sneak it into something he could keep separate (in their ordinary school days Celes had been picky as hell about royal milk tea, which Enoshima hadn't cared for at all; he could see Celes carrying up two mugs, easy to tell apart, easy to remember which one was drugged). He had to eat from a plate on the floor at her feet, with his fingers, but he'd guessed that might happen and gone for stuff that wasn't too messy. Even if he'd had to go full dog and stick his face in without using his hands at all, it wouldn'tve been as bad as it could've been.

"Needs more salt," Enoshima said when she was done, "but good job." 

( _Mom said it was better to have too little salt than too much. Easier to add than subtract_.)

"Now let me get a look at you."

He stripped. It was almost easy now. The hard part, this time, was the way she touched him, her fingers framing his jaw. Not harsh or possessive but almost tender. Somewhere far away from here, coming from someone else, he thought he _would_ have called it tender. He had cooking on the brain so he thought of the one time when he was maybe twelve or thirteen and trying to be helpful he wrecked a cake pan putting it in the fridge after it came out of the oven, the hot and cold colliding leaving cracks all through the glass. 

"You don't have a fever again, do you?" Before he could answer she leaned forward and pressed her forehead to his the way Mom used to, to check his temperature against hers. Their faces were so close, too close, but his eyes stayed open. She straightened up, smiling. "Good." She'd taken him by his wrist, where the skin was raw from the handcuffs, where the tears and breaks had scabbed. "Bleeding's not too bad, is it?"

"No."

"Pity that had to happen," she said, and as he clung to the knowledge she hadn't _had_ to do _shit_ she turned his hand palm upward and used her other hand to drop something into it. He closed his fingers over it automatically. It had a handle and an on-off switch. "Why don't you have some fun over there to make up for it?"

 _Over there_ was a blanket on the floor, the kind she laid out when she wanted things more comfortable without going to the bed. Her tone and her touch were so soft he almost tried saying no thank you, like it was a kind offer he was politely turning down; he'd kick himself later for not doing it but right then he didn't want to risk disturbing her equilibrium. He lay back and turned the thing on. It hummed and trembled in his grip. He jerked off with that, holding it to his dick, while she watched. It was still embarrassing how easy he got hard and got off in front of her. She didn't touch herself but she seemed satisfied with what she'd made of him.

When she sent him back she made him take the vibrator "in case you feel lonely." She also had him take aspirin for the pain and another bottle of the headmaster's liquor. He wasn't sure what the last one had been but this one was whiskey, some swanky Suntory like Dad used to have a glass of nights he got home really late. He put the whiskey with the rest of their food, the aspirin with their collection of medicines, and the vibrator in the sock drawer with the necklace. 

From what he couldn't stop himself from seeing or hearing over the following days she didn't act like this with Celes or Oowada, didn't lay on the fake affection as thick. Maybe because she'd had him the longest, had him more completely helpless than the others. Maybe because he'd used to hit on her. Maybe because it was easiest to get him to cry.

***

The fourth trial happened sometime on day twenty-eight or twenty-nine. Enoshima didn't give them a DVD this time. Celes got wind of it in Data Processing, looking over the cameras while Enoshima fucked her, and she noticed Sakura Oogami was nowhere to be seen.

"Just her?" said Oowada. "No one else?"

Celes nodded. "No one else."

Two obvious possibilities. First was that she'd broken a rule and been killed like Ikusaba. Second was she'd killed herself and taken the fastest way out of this hellhole like – as they saw when they looked at each other – each of them had contemplated. 

"You sure she's not hanging out in the sauna or something?" said Leon. "There's no camera there, right? Or, hey, maybe she'll be coming in tomorrow."

They stared at him. "Look," he said, trying to talk like he was grasping at straws, wanted so bad to believe it (which was easy because once he thought about it he did), "say Oogami did break some stupid rule. Punched out a Monobear or whatever. Okay, we know what she did to Ikusaba. But that was a setup. Set an example. Now that everyone's thinking dead is dead, she can kill people over this shit and she will, she can say, well, she fucked up, she's dead too, and they'll believe her." 

They stared at him some more, probably wondering about his attack of the stupids. Maybe he _could've_ been an actor ( _Happen to know what kind of guys Maizono likes?_ and looking back he could see how Naegi was trying not to laugh or sigh). 

That small plan worked. Leon got it out of Enoshima the morning of day thirty. When she was lounging with her fingers in his hair he spoke, tentative, let his voice shake – um, hey, something happen to Oogami...? Is she maybe going to...? He did his best to look stupid and last-ditch hopeful so she'd have more fun with telling the truth than refusing it.

She told him it was suicide, that she'd knocked back the poison helpfully provided in the chem lab. Laughed about how Asahina framed herself for it, trying to get everyone to follow her best friend to the grave. Glossed over the fact that it obviously hadn't succeeded. There was even more to it, he guessed, but didn't risk going further. Enoshima was in such a good mood she said she'd give him an exclusive look at the What Really Happened someday – "It's hilarious, trust me."

***

The chosen culprit in Oogami's absence arrived the same day, a Monobear delivering a laptop and accessories. Celes didn't raise a hand this time to hide her stricken expression.

"Fujisaki's AI," said Leon when the Monobear left.

"Yes," said Celes, plugging in the power cord to the laptop. Oowada picked up the other end and went to plug it behind the TV. "He'd reconstructed it, somehow, and hid it in the public bath. No cameras."

"But there were mikes."

Celes nodded. "I know that now. Yamada-kun was enthralled. A genuine two-dimensional being, based on Fujisaki-kun without biology to interfere with his fantasy. And Ishimaru-kun..." She looked over to Oowada, who looked back. "Believe me or not, but Ishimaru-kun went a little... _mad_. Alter Ego – that's its name – still had our voice and image files and used them in an attempt to console him. It went badly. He believed it was channeling Oowada-kun."

***

"Good morning," said Alter Ego in Fujisaki's reassembled voice, and faltered, its digitized face taking on Fujisaki's worried expression while Leon and Oowada gaped. "I'm sorry. Kuwata-kun? Oowada-kun? Celes-san? I was led to believe –"

"That we're all dead," said Oowada.

A moment's silence. "Fujisaki-kun didn't finish voice recognition," said Celes. "The sound works, but it can't understand it. Use the keyboard." She used it as she spoke and the words appeared onscreen. _Our deaths were faked by the mastermind. We have been held captive in a hidden part of the school. Junko Enoshima is also alive. The other deaths you may have been informed of are genuine._

"Oh," said Alter Ego. "I thought... I thought this might be the afterlife. But that would be silly, wouldn't it?"

"We've –" said Leon before remembering to lean past Celes and type. It was weird, hearing it speak but not being able to speak right back. His fingers were clumsy on the keyboard. _We've seen sillier. Do you know who the mastermind is, too?_

"Yes. Enoshima-san. She spoke to me. She told me that I had outlived my usefulness and was to be executed for interfering with the school network. I believe she was testing whether I have the capacity to feel afraid. That's the reason for my strange thought."

"Usefulness," said Celes. Brushed Leon's hand away, typed: _Did she plant you in the library?_

"I believe so. She deconstructed my code, but left enough so that my master could partially reassemble it. She also removed my textual memory. I had your image and sound files, but no context. My master suspected – he recognized traces of his own programming style – but before he could develop his theory further –"

Oowada's fist clenched. He turned away. 

Leon wondered if Enoshima had gone so far as to bring out another motive just because Fujisaki was catching on. She wouldn't even have to've had Oowada in mind. If someone was willing to kill to keep their secret from getting out, they'd likely have decided on Fujisaki. Maybe she knew little enough about Fujisaki that she'd thought _he_ would try. 

(The second time around Fujisaki blinked as he laid eyes on each of them, like he was trying to figure out where he'd seen them before. It was easy to explain for most of them – _Leon_ saw most of them before the lost years, in pics on the Internet, and _he'd_ gotten the most doubletakes both the first time and the second because he'd grown his hair out and gone on a piercing spree. Not so much for the likes of Kirigiri or Naegi. Fujisaki had ventured to ask Naegi outright if they'd met; the Good Luck student each year didn't get a press release or anything so you didn't know who they were in advance unless they said so, which some had but Naegi hadn't. Maybe Fujisaki's brain was so genius the amnesia thing didn't work as well on him. For all the good that'd done him)

"Would you mind if I asked for clarification?"

Celes: _Not in the least_. 

"I believe the currently surviving students in the main part of the school would be: Kirigiri-san, Naegi-kun, Asahina-san, Oogami-san, Hagakure-kun, Togami-kun, and Fukawa-san. Is that correct?"

Said like that, the list was depressingly short. What was worse, by rights it was even shorter. He thought that was getting to Celes too; she frowned, very slightly. _Unfortunately, Oogami-san has also passed_. 

"Oh.... only Oogami-san?" Fujisaki had told the AI enough that it – _he_ , he didn't even _sound_ like a robot, talked with as much sense as Fujisaki, was enough of a person to be afraid– expected deaths to come in twos. "And there's no one else with you?"

 _She committed suicide. There was no one to be executed._ Celes paused. _Except, apparently, for you_.

***

Turned out the battery life for the laptop was incredibly long – another in-school invention. They kept Alter Ego plugged in for now, though, to keep the charge stored up in case the power went off again.

He had to keep in mind Alter Ego wasn't Fujisaki's ghost clinging to a microchip. He especially had to keep that in mind because there were times he didn't feel all that sane, either, and it was too easy to imagine himself clinging to the computer, sinking into a happy delusion (if it was a _happy_ delusion...). Oowada sat at Alter Ego just long enough to ask what he'd told Ishimaru. He repeated it word-for-word, with Oowada's image and Oowada's voice, and when he apologized Oowada said, "Nah, I _wish_ I could've said something like that." Leon thought it sounded like Oowada at his best. And Alter Ego of course spent tons more time around Fujisaki. How much realer could _that_ be, if he wanted to pretend?

Alter Ego wasn't the only program on the laptop, and was happy to show them around. The typical stuff computers came loaded with: text editor, painter, calculator, solitaire, a useless web browser. Celes had her own decks of cards, most of them souvenirs, but said the solitaire might be good when you felt too lazy to deal. The text program got more notice – Leon and Oowada had made their scratches and Celes had started working on another wall with her eyeliner but the computer made writing a lot easier and you didn't have to worry about running out of space. Oowada was keeping his distance but Celes and Leon each made a file on the desktop with their name on it; Alter Ego assured them he'd make sure they didn't snoop though Alter Ego himself was always on snoop mode, by nature. When Leon took his turn lying on the bed, the laptop propped up off the sheets by the neglected photo album (for ventilation, Alter Ego had advised), Celes's had disappeared down some rabbit hole. He spent a while staring at his blank window before starting to type. Small and stupid things he hunt-and-pecked out but they were some of the first things he'd actually written, actual _words_ , for a long time. 

_My name is Leon Kuwata. I'm eighteen years old (at least). I've been down here for more than two months now. Maybe you'll read this and laugh at me. I don't know._

_I didn't mean to kill her._  
  
He stared at that sentence for another while. Then he stared as the blinking line went down into the empty space and more words began to appear. Alter Ego knew how to be discreet. 

_I believe you, Kuwata-kun. My master would have_. 

He stared at that for a while, too. _Thanks_.

  
***

He told him what happened. Used his words. It was different from pointing Oowada to the DVD to let it talk for him and he wasn't sure what felt worse. The other thing had been a whole month ago (only a month?). It was hard to compare.

_I broke her wrist. Her right wrist. She dropped the knife then but she grabbed it again, with her left hand, and she ran into the bathroom. The door was stuck. I thought it was locked. I banged on it. I said we needed to talk. She didn't answer. That should've clued me in. I went back to my room, got the screwdriver, undid the doorknob._

_She really freaked out when I got in. She was screaming she didn't want to die. She tried to stab me again. I grabbed her hand. I was trying to get the knife away from her. I was. I tried to show her I didn't take anything in with me, no weapons or anything. I pushed it away from me. I pushed too hard._

_There was this awful noise. She let go of the knife. I got hold of her then, I was going to say something like okay can we talk now? Like normal people? She looked down. I saw the knife. I saw the blood._  
  
Alter Ego wrote beneath that, _I'm sorry._

That was like Fujisaki, too, how he said sorry sorry sorry for things that weren't his fault at all.

  
***

The evening of day thirty-two Enoshima decided to push them across another boundary. There were reasons beyond sadistic boredom but they found those out much later. They got the slightest hint when she turned on the PA system and demanded in her own voice, her angriest voice, "Ask Clonejisaki there where the chute went."

 _Enoshima wants to know where the chute went,_ Leon typed, being at the laptop at the time. _Any more idea what she's talking about than we do?_

"I'm sorry," Alter Ego said aloud, "I don't know what she means."

"Don't you _dare_ try and lie to me, you hunk of scrap!" Alter Ego's face – Fujisaki's face – began to look apprehensive as she ranted on. He might not be able to parse her words but he could pick up her tone. "I can make that _literal_ , you know, for real! What kind of lousy robot can't do what it's fucking told? I could pump that room full of sarin gas and cart you all off to the incinerator!"

He condensed it to: _She's threatening you._ Celes raised an eyebrow which he ignored. 

He must have read something in his face. "That's not all. Is it?"

_She's threatening us._

"What kind of threats?"

Enoshima: "You are the lamest fucking translator!" 

_Saying she could kill us all. Kill you for real._  
  
"She could do that to you?"  
 __  
Yeah. I think so.  
  
"She would?"

_I don't know. She might._

"But I really _don't_ know!" Pixelated tears forming. "I don't have network access anymore!"

Enoshima sounded suddenly and dangerously calmer. "Is that _so?_ "That one Leon entered verbatim. 

"If I knew anything that'd keep you from hurting my master's friends I'd tell you. I would!"

"How _touching_." 

This was it, Leon thought. She'd let the others up there have Alter Ego for a while and then snatched him away. Now she was going to do it again and maybe now she'd _really_ wipe out – kill – murder – the last piece of Chihiro Fujisaki in the world, just for kicks.

But she didn't do it. What she said next was, "You're such good friends, aren't you? You've bonded very tightly, huh?"

Oowada muttered something. Celes said, sounding bored, "If we have?"

"Show me what pals you are. I want an orgy in there by Night Time."

***

The next while passed in a haze. Oowada burst out in yells at intervals. Celes kept her mask on, kept asking for elaboration ("It wouldn't do to displease you, would it?") until Enoshima laid out exactly what she defined as an orgy, exactly what she wanted from them. Each of them had to fuck the other two. At least one of their two fucks had to involve a cock going in somewhere. Each only counted if someone managed to come.

After Enoshima signed off ("Make sure to enjoy yourselves!") Oowada kicked at the wall, at the bedframe, at the door. "Shit! We can't – she can't – we can't – she can't make us!"

"She can turn off the power," said Leon. He splayed a hand over his face. "She can turn off the water."

"She can take the computer," said Celes, and she didn't mean they'd miss the self-dealing solitaire.

"That's fucking _low_."

"That may be so, but it's true."

Leon was still sitting in front of the laptop. Alter Ego blinked at him. He put his hands back to the keyboard.  
 _She wants us to do things to each other. Okay with you if I turn this off? Until it's over._

"Things," Alter Ego repeated, and Leon wondered if he knew enough to guess what kind of things. "... all right. If that's what you think is best." On the screen his lip trembled just like Fujisaki's did when he tried not to cry. "Please stay safe!"

***

After he closed the laptop and took it over to the shelves, Celes took her eyeliner and sketched out a triangle on the tabletop. On each point: _Kuwata_ , _Oowada_ , for herself not _Ludenberg_ or _Yasuhiro_ but _me_. Set to it like one of those puzzles – how do you get the squabbling animals across the river in the least amount of trips without them eating each other? "Do you have any preferences?"

Things stalled after that – probably wasn't the best choice of words, they knew what they'd all prefer. Eventually Leon swallowed and said "I could... go down on you."

She made a note of it on the line of the triangle between them. "That leaves Oowada-kun for something penetrative. Would you have a problem with that?" Oowada muttered something incomprehensible. "I'll take that as a no, for the moment." Another note. "And that leaves the two of you to work something out between yourselves."

Oowada managed to say, "You better get that shit off the table after this."

"Rest assured, I will. Now, when should we start? I personally think it's best to begin early, in case we encounter difficulties."

***

They started a half hour later (two hours twenty-one minutes to go), after coughing down some of the Suntory. That was Leon's idea; it could fuzz the edges, let guards down, and if they didn't remember as much the next day so much the better. They could've gotten really sloshed, it was strong enough and the bottle was big enough, but Celes told them to be careful, that – not in so many words – getting too drunk gave a guy problems getting it up and then where would they be? As it was he didn't feel nearly out of it enough.

They kept the stereo off, same as those times Enoshima came down here. Maybe the music could've helped sometimes, with going away, but with his luck Leon thought there was a better chance it would've been ruined from then on, that whenever he heard it he'd have to remember what'd been happening that other time he'd heard it. Psychology thing. Like in that old English movie, something about oranges. At least so far Enoshima hadn't thought of doing that. 

Celes sat against the headboard in the center of the bed with the blanket folded and bunched up between her shoulders and her bare feet, her feet set well apart from one another. She was wearing one of her simpler dresses, one that didn't need dry cleaning (he hadn't been sure she had any until they barricaded themselves inside with no Super High School Level Laundry to be had). Leon climbed over the foot of the bed and went under the blanket, under her long full skirt, between her legs up to where they opened. 

His plan, such as it was, was to pretend it was Enoshima he was doing it to. Nothing he hadn't done before. It wasn't his fault this time, it _wasn't_ , any more than it was every other time she made him get her off. If Enoshima hadn't said what she did, if they weren't afraid of what she would do, they'd never be doing this. She might fob this off on them but it didn't work like it had up there, where they very well could've _not_ killed each other. If she hadn't outright said "Fuck Celes" or "Eat out Celes" that was only because she thought it was funnier for them to have to work it out themselves. That way it seemed more like it was happening because of them. 

He could put this together in his head, all logical and such. It helped him feel a little less sick, even if he was still sick enough to know this wasn't what he'd gotten used to, resigned to. Something else that made it a little easier was he couldn't see Celes's face. When he put his own face down and his tongue out she felt a little different but the differences weren't so obvious, especially in the dark.

He said, wondering if he was loud enough, "Lemme know if..."

"I will," said Celes. The illusion cracked there, but he thought it was worth it, making sure.

She reacted different ways from Enoshima, too, small ways and large ones, but the basics were the same. He pulled out all the stops, used every get-it-over-with trick he knew with his breath and his piercing and how to circle in with his tongue. Enoshima would make him slow down sometimes, but Celes just shook and breathed louder and started to gasp until her legs went together, pinned his head there for a moment. " _Oh_!" sharp and short. Her legs fell back apart. He paused and hoped and his hopes came true this once when she said "That's enough."

Leon came out from under the blanket and got off the bed. Went behind the black sheet, nodded to Oowada waiting there with his hands over his ears, and washed his face and rinsed his mouth while Celes and Oowada took their turn. He kept the water on and tried not to hear too much. There wasn't much to hear. Anxious whispering and moving and then Celes called out again and that was it. He waited until Celes stepped around the sheet, holding her skirt like she expected it to fly up again like that old picture of – whatshername – that dead American actress. Then he went back out.

(Marilyn Monroe. That was it.)

Oowada was the one sitting up in bed now, the blanket over his legs. It stopped far enough above his ankles to see he was still wearing pants. That made sense. All he had to do was unzip and take it out. Less skin-to-skin. He didn't look as brain-broken as Leon had feared he would. He had such a thing about hitting girls, even girls as tough as Ikusaba and Oogami, that the reasonable assumption was if someone made him have sex with one – 

Rape. Wasn't that the word? Rapists and raping. It wasn't as if Celes wanted this, if it made any difference whether or not she did. He couldn't think of Oowada as a rapist, though. Maybe because that would make _him_ a rapist, when he had enough to deal with being a killer, but they hadn't wanted this either. Was it possible for two people to rape each other?

Behind him the water kept running. At last he said, "Wanna wait until she's done and you can...?"

He trailed off as Oowada blinked at him, tried to think if there was a better way to say it. Then Oowada shook his head. "Nah. Let's just get it over with. I can wash up after."

"Okay." Wasn't as if he hadn't already had Celes and far worse than Celes all over his face. "Um. How do we do this?" The way Celes had said _work something out between yourselves_ , like it was that easy, he'd almost thought it would somehow work itself out during the last two fucks. "I could blow you. I think. That work?" Someone's cock had to go somewhere and it'd be simpler than one of them fucking the other in the ass, wouldn't it? If they didn't want someone torn up they'd have to mess around with lube and shit, there'd be literal shit. And maybe a blowjob wouldn't be quite as bad, quite as far. There was a reason, he figured, why he'd heard some girls were okay with guys putting it in their mouth but not, well, down there, besides getting knocked up. You couldn't get knocked up in the ass. 

"Might work." He looked down, then, toward what was under the blanket. "Only I don't know if I can... y'know..."

"I know I can jerk off," said Leon. Oowada probably knew by now, too. "I can try that. If I do it at the same time maybe... I mean, someone just has to get off, doesn't have to be the same as..."

They looked at each other trying to think of any other reason to delay. Leon got onto the bed again, lifted the blanket. 

Oowada said just as he put his head under, "Look, there's something else you'd better –"

The sound of Enoshima clearing her throat might've been a gunshot the way they both startled, and whatever would follow it'd hurt. It was Leon who finally raised his head and talked like he was trying not to sound scared; she liked that sometimes. "Yeah? Something wrong?"

"I'll say! Do you bastards _really_ think what I wanted to see was a bunch of lumps bumping around under the covers? You could be reading poetry down there for all I know! Take it off this instant!" 

Oowada lowered his head; _now_ he looked brain-broken. Leon had to tug on the blanket before he did as she said. His pants were zipped and buttoned.

"You're lucky I don't make you take it from the top! Now _get to it_!"

"Okay," said Leon, getting down between Oowada's legs. "Okay. Not much difference. Cameras've gotten an eyeful a billion times already. Just don't look. Make like an ostrich. Hey, wait, what'd you want to –"

"Doesn't matter now," Oowada muttered, and Leon understood more than he wanted to. 

They _hadn't_ fucked, Oowada and Celes. They'd just pulled up the blanket and humped around for a while and Celes yelled like she came. Enoshima had guessed that, and hadn't cared. Not then. She didn't care if Celes was faking it (and whyhadn't Celes bothered suggesting to _him_ that they fake it?). That wasn't what she was after. 

What she was after was him and Oowada and what was left of their friendship. Even after Fujisaki and everything they held on to each other, relied on each other. Enoshima wanted to ruin that. Wanted something to drive between them. It wasn't enough for them to look at each other and remember Fujisaki and Maizono, for them to remember seeing each other tortured. She wanted them to look at each other and remember being used as sex toys. A couple of dolls, a couple of puppets being jerked around and smashed together in tangles. 

They could still refuse, couldn't they? They had a choice, a small one. They could just not do it. Say: we're not playing your game anymore. 

And they could choose to starve slowly in the dark. Not just them. Celes, too. They couldn't decide that for her no matter what she'd done. She'd done her part and they couldn't back out on theirs. Not for Alter Ego, either. He couldn't go hungry but his complicated circuits were too easy to smash past recognition. 

Leon didn't look up. He looked down just long enough to undo Oowada's pants, get his dick out. Then he closed his eyes, opened his mouth. 

It wasn't like with Celes. He'd only done it with those Monominions that one day and they'd done most of the...doing. It took a while to get Oowada hard, and just before it happened he was starting to think he might have to resort to getting the vibrator. Oowada made this _sound_ when he did, horrible, horrified. Like he was doing something wrong, like he could help it, getting it up with his cock in Leon's mouth. His martyr complex again, Leon thought, then thought again: would he feel that much different if it was him sitting there, Oowada blowing him and not wanting to? No. There was a reason he'd offered to do the eating out and the blowing ( _the bitch, the cocksucker_ ). There were two ways to feel awful here and he'd picked the one he thought he could take best. 

_Her fault_ , he tried to keep in his head. _All her fault_. _We'd never be doing this if it weren't for her._

 __(But: _Her fault, he'd thought, yanking off his bloodstained jacket, scrambling around what he thought was Maizono's room on hands and knees, her fault her fault her fault because it was the path of least resistance, it was the easiest thing to think, to tell himself he was the real victim here, he deserved to live or at least to not die, she wouldn't be dead if she wasn't psychotic, she had it coming_ –)

(But: _Kirigiri holding back Naegi by one arm as he lunged at the Monobear, keeping the body count that day from going up again. Naegi saying to Celes: I've had enough, stop this. Naegi saying with bright and furious eyes something like: it's not Kuwata-kun's fault, it's not Maizono-san's fault, it's all_ his _fault!_ )

(Naegi had the most to lose and Naegi had adored Maizono... if nothing else he could believe Naegi, couldn't he...?)

Oowada screamed when he came. Leon knew that scream, he'd made it once, and was vaguely surprised when it didn't taste like blood. He remembered he could pull his head away, get it out of him, no one was holding him in place. He did that and spat so hard he started to retch. Come on the sheets. Come on Oowada's pants. Oowada had other pants but they didn't have any extra bedding, not in the right size. He wondered why he was thinking about this. He got up. The water was still running. "Celes?" he said, behind his hand. He hadn't meant to sound so pleading. 

Celes came out and mercifully said nothing. He hadn't swallowed a drop, thinking logically the most he should've had to do was rinse, but that didn't stop him from collapsing and puking into the toilet. He could see what was left of what he'd had for dinner, the mush of half-digested ramen, the colorful blots of red grapes. He pressed the flush, threw up some more, flushed again. 

That was stupid. Made no sense. If he was going to throw up it should've been after those other men were done with them. No way Oowada's come was more disgusting than theirs. The sick fucks, who knew where they'd been. 

He rinsed maybe six or seven times and brushed his teeth and only then he made himself leave again so Oowada could use the shower. 

"I'm sorry," he said when Oowada came out. 

Oowada threw up his arms. "You're sorry! _You're_ sorry!" He looked even worse when Leon flinched.

***

He didn't remember to turn the laptop back on until the next morning. The moment it loaded, Alter Ego was straining to make out what he could with the webcam. "Good morning. Is everyone...?"

_Yeah. We're all in one piece._

"That's good." Alter Ego's head tipped as he analyzed something. "But bad things happened, didn't they?"

 _They did. We've had worse_.

"You have?"

He considered. _Not sure._

"Oh." His head tipped to the other side, but when he replied his mouth didn't move. Words appeared like they had in the text file. _My master would have said it was the mastermind who forced you to do it. It's not your fault, Kuwata-kun. Not really._

_Sounds like something he'd say, all right._

_Oh no. That is, actually it was other people who said that to him._

_Really? Who?_

_Asahina-san and Yamada-kun and Naegi-kun._

_When'd they say that?_

_Master told me this. He believed you were dead, and he was responsible. Because he voted for you, and because he voted at all. He was very upset. He was still upset, when he told me. But he told me what the others told him. It's not your fault.  
_  
 _Thanks,_ he typed, and did his best not to cry on the keyboard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the canon game timeline, Chihiro programs Alter Ego in even less time than I gave him here, though in his free time events he tells Naegi he's still in the research stages for a strong AI. Alter Ego somehow knows exactly what Mondo looks and sounds like. Also, when everyone introduces themselves in the first chapter, Chihiro asks Naegi if they've met before. At the beginning of the second chapter he says he already can't stand killing people, and when asked about the "already" he reveals he feels responsible for Leon's death. 
> 
> Yamada tells Hagakure it doesn't matter if Alter Ego is male, but still refers to him as female.


	6. Chapter 6

The next couple days, thirty-three and thirty-four, were not the worst but they were bad enough. No Monobear arrived that day, or the next. They ate the last of the bananas before the peels got any browner. Doughnuts. Sandwiches. On the second day, by ten in the morning and still no Monobear, Celes spoke and suggested they start to ration. Even rationing, they ate most of the rest of the fresh fruit that day. That left three apples, eight cups of ramen, ten instant congees, half a loaf of bread, half a jar of jam, a bag of raisins, a bag of cashews, a box of rice crackers, enough tea for the next month. 

He could say all day _not our fault not your fault_ but that didn't stop how Oowada looked at him now. Sometimes he wanted to yell like Oowada carefully kept himself from doing. Something obvious like _I'm not fucking dead! You didn't kill me!_ But it wasn't all on Oowada because no matter how much Leon _got_ that it wasn't the fault of any of them the massive bed felt far too small now. When Oowada slept on the floor he no longer said a thing. He hadn't known how much Oowada had made him feel safe until he stopped feeling safe. 

And sometimes he'd get pissed off remembering how Oowada got hard in his mouth, think something like a _real_ friend would've been stronger than that, and he _knew_ that was stupid because if Oowada hadn't been able to get it up he'dve been pissed off at _that_ because the whole thing would've taken even longer. 

Those two days he played a lot of solitaire. Alter Ego gave him hints. Cheating probably but who was around to judge him? He was starting to latch on to Alter Ego tight as Yamada or Ishimaru ever did. And how would Enoshima use _that_? He made like an ostrich best as he could, though he knew he'd have to face it eventually, because trying to think that over, how she could step on his fingers every time he dared to reach out, was too much for him to take.

Those two nights the dreams he remembered were all nightmares. One he didn't remember but it had to be bad because he woke up trying to force words past his closed-up throat and once the words came out they turned out to be _"Sayaka! Sayaka!"_

He didn't know whether or not he regretted that they didn't have the morphine anymore.

***

Morning of day thirty-five. Still no Monobear. He wasn't hungry at all but Oowada told him in his carefully-not-yelling voice to _eat goddamnit_ and then looked sick with himself. So Leon had an apple which he didn't bite as close to the core as he used to, and he went back to solitaire seeing if he could bump up his win percentage.

He was trying to figure out which red nine to drop on the black ten when the door opened. He looked over expecting a Monobear, disgusted with himself for his relief.

Makoto Naegi stood there, just outside, staring in.

"No!" he was saying though nos would do no more good than they ever had before, "No! Fuck no! Not you, not _you_!"

Naegi's face fell. That kicked-puppy look, he'd used to think, one that didn't quite measure up to Fujisaki's frightened-rabbit look. "Kuwata-kun...? Oowada-kun...? Celes-san...? Even...? It's true...?" 

At some point Leon had gotten on his feet. "You didn't! You _didn't_! We didn't even get another DVD, you couldn't have –!" But they hadn't gotten a DVD for Oogami and Alter Ego, either. "Why would you be that _stupid_?" 

He'd known for a long time now that there was a lot of stuff he _hadn't_ known. He hadn't known that Enoshima and Ikusaba were deranged, that Fukawa was a serial killer, that Celes and Maizono had it in them to kill, that Oowada had it in him to kill people he thought were weak and needed protecting. But Naegi? _Naegi_? Everyone's-friend Naegi? Naegi who'd passed out at the sight of Maizono's body? Naegi who'd worked so hard to keep alive the people left? That was too much, too far – 

Naegi's eyes widened. "No! No, I didn't kill anyone! I mean, she _said_ so, but – it's all right! The mastermind's dead! You're safe now!"

"Are they ghosts?" Hagakure called from somewhere in the hall. "Tell me they're not ghosts."

"They're not ghosts," said Naegi obligingly.

***

Back up to Data Processing, the whole troop of them, Asahina and Hagakure talking over each other, Naegi and Kirigiri speaking up from time to time, Togami and Fukawa completely silent. Up there they jacked the laptop back into the system and the Alter Ego on the computer reunited with the copy he'd uploaded into the school network. It was Alter Ego who'd messed with the chute in the execution setup so that not only was it obvious Naegi hadn't been crushed under the massive block, he was shunted into the garbage instead of the basement cage where Enoshima meant to go pick him up at her leisure and add him to her collection. Before she descended into the courtroom Enoshima had encrypted everything to do with the fake executions, the secret room. Her plan, best as they could tell, had been to fall through the way it was originally timed so her disappearance from under the crusher would be harder to notice, unlock the cage with her own key, and lie low until the others had gone, and what more she would've done to the four of them left after that Leon could only guess.

But that time it was Alter Ego who'd kept the trapdoor closed, who'd left her staring up in incomprehension as the block slammed down. 

Technically, he guessed, that made Alter Ego a killer AI like in those scifi movies. The thought didn't frighten him like he might've thought it would, having a killer AI around. Not when Alter Ego said with Fujisaki's most determined face, "Now she can't hurt you anymore."

As Hagakure used a whatsit they'd found in the Monobear room to undo the shock anklets, he started mumbling about _vengeful_ ghosts. Asahina kicked at him. 

Celes wanted to see Enoshima's body for herself. One of the cameras in that execution room focused on the blood-spattered block while Alter Ego accessed the controls to lift it back up. Leon didn't look. Togami told Fukawa not to look. "Yes, Byakuya-sama." Oowada looked, and looked sick. Celes's eyes widened and her mouth opened just a bit before she put herself back together and said with a nod, "That's enough, thank you."

Naegi said he'd first started to suspect when he went back to the biology lab to pay his respects and realized that while there were nine indicator lights for occupied morgue drawers, only six of the drawers had actual bodies – ones they'd seen up close, seen stop breathing, touched to feel no pulse: Ikusaba, Maizono, Fujisaki, Yamada, Ishimaru, and Oogami. Even when she set them loose for their final investigation Enoshima played the long game. It wasn't hard then, when they knew what they were looking for, for the network Alter Ego to break through the slapdash encryption and show them footage. 

Leon looked round at everyone, the expressions they didn't have, and thought: at least it wasn't _that_ footage. 

"I've found the procedure she used to restore memories," said Alter Ego. "It's very painful, though, and there's a significant risk of brain damage if used carelessly."

_Now_ everyone stared at them. Kirigiri said, "So the three of you remember."

"Yeah," said Oowada, still looking sick. 

Naegi typed to Alter Ego: could he please look for a way to make it safer, less painful.

***

Hagakure and Oowada took their toolkits to the prize machine and emptied it of what was left, leaving it in a pile to be claimed once it was sorted out who'd had what.

(He remembered: Maizono's friendship bracelets, the ones she'd given him and Naegi and Fukawa – what a strange pair they'd made, Maizono and Fukawa. One of those bottles of blueberry perfume was his and another was Kirigiri's and another was Fujisaki's and another one he'd given Ishimaru to watch him sputter. Ishimaru's bright red scarf and the matching one he got Oowada for his birthday. The book on Brazilian wrestling Oogami had been studying. The preserved roses in test tubes Togami ordered for Fujisaki and the girls on the White Day just before the Incident.) 

They found the storage where Enoshima left the rest of everyone's things, names scrawled on the walls over careless heaps. Leon picked up a New Year's card that had fluttered loose; he read _Touko Fukawa_ in Maizono's neat hand, and that was enough. When he held it out to Fukawa she snatched it. 

A ways off, Asahina shouted – she'd found the medals she won at the Tokyo Olympics, gold and silver. She ran back with them swinging from her hands, ran up to him. "Kuwata? Do you remember – did I really –?"

"Yeah. You did." He ventured to add, shifting foot to foot, "You were great."

"Thanks! That's great to know, that I was great, even if..." The smile dropped off her face and she looked away. Leon looked away in the opposite direction. 

There were still some things left under _Taeko Yasuhiro_ , _Mondo Oowada_ , _Leon Kuwata_. Leon shuffled through his sad little pile. There were his rolling suitcases and duffel bags hanging open and empty. There was his phone, battery long dead, and its charger. There were notebooks – some regular-lined with scrawled lyrics that grew less bad as he flipped through, some with his attempts at sheet music. There were books and printouts, too, with beginning guitar lessons and voice exercises Maizono recommended and songs he'd wanted to learn. There was the Swiss Army watch he'd gotten from Dad as a reward for his high school exams. There was his small DVD collection in a cardboard box on which Enoshima had noted to herself _Give slowly_. There was a rubber-banded sheaf of cards and their matching envelopes. There Enoshima had written _For Valentine's Day_ , smiley face. 

Not just Valentine's Day, he found. New Year's, and his birthday. Maizono's handwriting again. They bent in his hand, beginning to fold, and he dropped them before he could crumple them.

***

Kirigiri said, "We know already the purifier operation wasn't _irrevocably_ linked to her vital signs, but do you remember anything about serious air pollution?"

"No," said Celes. "Unless a nuclear plant or chemical factory exploded in the meantime. Which is... not unlikely, but..."

"There's still people out there who've lived this long," said Naegi. "They tried to rescue us. Hagakure-kun heard them once. Would she have lied about that?"

"It would depend, wouldn't it, on which she believed would be more despair-inducing. That we were utterly abandoned, or that well-meaning people had died because of us?"

"We all have our old luggage," said Kirigiri. "We should pack what we can carry. We may not be able to return."

Leon wondered when it was they'd all decided to leave.

***

He packed the notebooks and the old cards. The handheld in its little case, and Project: Zombie and the copy of Pagan Dance he'd swiped from the prize machine pile that had a fifty-fifty chance of being Fujisaki's or Togami's. His Yasu Shishido shirt, wrapping it around the handheld to pad it a little more. The motive DVD. The photo album he hadn't opened in weeks. _Never Mind the Bollocks_ and _London Calling_ and _Damned Damned Damned_ and _Sigh No More_ the one Maizono had liked. His priorities needed work. He took the rest of his clothes from the dresser and was halfway through sorting out the ones that would work best on a camping trip from hell when he remembered he didn't have to do what he was told.

Celes had already remembered that. She was sitting on her trunk with an embroidery hoop and her own fancy sewing kit with the pins that looked like they had little jewels on their tops, stitching away. 

Okay, maybe he didn't really want to live the rest of his life with just Celes for company, but the school was big enough they should be able to stay away from each other. And there'd be Alter Ego in the network, wouldn't there? Never hurt to have a backup, Fujisaki taught him that much.

Oowada stopped his own packing after a while and came over to where Leon sat against the wall with his knees to his chest. He stood too close and too far away. "'s there trouble?"

"Nah." He opened his mouth again, gave the sentence a field test. "'s just that I'm not going."

"But you've _gotta_ go," said Oowada. "We've got to get outta here."

"Way I figure it," said Leon, "it was when we forgot we've got to stay _in_ here that the trouble started."

"We can't stay."

"We've got the greenhouse, the chicken coop, century's worth of vitamins n' shit. We figured that'd work, didn't we? And it's still working."

"You know that's not what I'm talking about."

"Then what the fuck're youtalking about? The bitch is dead and zombies don't exist."

"You _hate_ it in here! I remember that much! Even the first time 'round – always saw you staring at the windows like you could see through 'em if you looked hard enough. Kept doing songs about the sky and stars and shit. That one time you couldn't shut up about baseball for a week –" 

( _Shit! It's mind control! I've been brainwashed by baseball!_ In his dorm room, with Naegi saying sensible things that he didn't want to acknowledge. Not back then, when he thought he was still sixteen and had the same attitude. The first time he was in baseball withdrawal, the time Oowada was talking about, he was a year older and could be slightly less stupid about it.)

"You would've made old man Kirigiri open up months ago if it weren't for that girl and that kid..." He faltered briefly, rallied: "I might not be that bright but I'm not _that_ stupid!"

"You _are_ that stupid! People change their minds all the goddamn time!"

"Not this way they don't! Fuck, you should be wanting out more'n ever now. Shit's not right!"

Leon jumped up and stepped forward and shoved Oowada square in the chest. Oowada stepped back, more surprised than overpowered. Knowing that made him shout even louder. " _Fuck you_! I might not be strong but I'm not a delicate fucking flower! Either way he's dead as ever! _Killed_ as ever! You _moron!_ You wanna cuddle something that fucking bad get another fucking dog! _Fuck off_!"

***

By the Swiss Army watch, Naegi came by twenty-four minutes after Oowada left. "Kuwata-kun?"

By this point Leon had gone on to unpacking the handheld and balancing it on his knees and mashing his way through the same rhythm level again and again. "Here."

"I heard... you want to stay?"

"Yeah. Why? Gonna drag me?"

They might, he thought. No reason to give a killer who hadn't after all been punished like they thought the choice of a cushy existence. If they had to suffer out there (why were they?), they might think, so would he. 

"No! No. We won't do that. I mean... since things haven't shut down like she said they would, none of us _have_ to go. The six of us are going to, anyway, no, wait, seven with Oowada-kun... there's all the bad memories, and we want to at least take a look at what's out there."

"You do that."

"I guess it _is_ a good idea to leave someone behind, in case we have to come back... but Alter Ego's staying, so we don't really _need_ anyone to... I'd like it, if you came."

Thoroughly ordinary Naegi who'd once had things so every single one of their class was at least a friend of a friend for every other one. 

"Really?" It didn't come out as sarcastic as he wanted.

Naegi nodded. "Really."

And Naegi, if anyone, anyone alive – Naegi could mean it. 

"If the air's not bad," said Naegi, "it wouldn't hurt to take a look, would it? Just a look, and see where we go from there. Would that be okay?"

He counted off in his head before he answered. "Sure."

"But, um, it wouldn't be a bad idea to be prepared. In case you change your mind and want to come with us, it'd save time. Wouldn't it? And if you want to move back up to your old room, something with more, ah, privacy, then you can just take it over there, after..."

He raised his head and managed to smile. "Okay. Okay." 

He went back to packing after he finished that round, while Naegi went to work his magic on Celes.

***

Even on the first floor they could hear Genocider Syo howl. "I want to see the boys _schtup_!"

Leon felt the blood leave his face. He gripped his duffel a little tighter and didn't look at Naegi put things together. His gaze caught Oowada's for a second, and after that second he didn't look at him either. Hagakure didn't seem to get it yet. From the stillness of her face Celes probably did. The greenhouse chickens clucked in their carrier, oblivious. 

A small mercy: judging from Syo's sulk on Fukawa's face when the final four joined them with their backpacks and so on, she hadn't gotten to see much of _that_. His skin crawled when she laid eyes on him and her tongue crawled further out the side of her mouth. "Mon-kun," she chirped, brightening up, "and Rei-chan! So you're still with us! But no Chi-tan or Kiyo-chan or –"

" _No_ ," said Naegi. 

Kirigiri was inscrutable as ever. Togami was equally inscrutable, holed up inside his contemptuous shell. Asahina, though, looked at him with open pity. He wondered how detailed Enoshima was with naming her files: "Gangbang with Monominions"? "Orgy after Naegi-kun escaped"? "The first time I reamed Kuwata-kun's ass"? Wondered if Alter Ego had the vocabulary to know what those kinds of words meant. 

Naegi whispered "May I?" and when Leon shrugged at him, bemused, he took Leon's hand and squeezed. His hand was small as ever but his grip was sure. Just a moment, and then Naegi dropped it and began to circulate for some last pep talks. 

At least he knew he wouldn't have to say goodbye to Alter Ego no matter what. Kirigiri had the laptop, which now held his updated and integrated program. Enoshima's files were on there now, which made him feel a little ill but aside from what records she kept on _them_ she also had things like the basics of how to get everyone's memories back without bashing them over the head. Without a connection the Alter Ego on the laptop would grow apart again from the one in the network, like legs of a starfish – different stimuli, Alter Ego explained – but if the copies ever recombined he wouldn't lose anything from it, he'd assured them, in fact he'd gain. "I'm glad I could help," he'd said, entering the contest for understatement of the century.

Naegi had the device with the ominous red button that'd been thrown clear of Enoshima's body. Naegi was the one to press it. Naegi was the one to pick up the chickens and stand closest to the reinforced doors as they slid open and Hope's Peak notably failed to self-destruct or be hovering in orbit. Outside, a collection of voices (so many voices!) began to yell.

***

So this was sunlight. Real summer sunlight, and a real blue summer sky with white cotton-wisps of cloud. He tilted his head back, shaded his eyes with one hand. According to Alter Ego, it was late June. The last day Leon remembered of the _before_ was in early April. The whole thing took less than three months.

He snapped out of his brief trance. The crowd was gathered past the fence, and he could tell there was a lot more of them than you could see in the opening where the front gate used to be. The school courtyard was a no-man's-land between them, with a scattering of weathered skeletons. There was one close by, fallen long-gone-face-down, and Leon thought he saw a familiar pattern in the bullet-ridden, rotting coat. A Crazy Diamond. He wondered if that one had tried before or after the second trial. Wondered if he'd been one of the ones who'd been lounging around their crash space on his last winter break, who'd given him a wave. He glanced to Oowada and it was clear he'd seen it too. 

The yelling out there had managed to get even louder. Leon didn't realize he was shaking so bad, starting to stumble back as the others moved forward, Asahina running outright – _okay I've taken my look that's all that's enough_ _happy now?_ – until Naegi touched his hand again. 

Naegi whispered, "Look at them. Listen."

He looked. People were starting to shove forward past the absent gate, sprinting across the courtyard. Closer and closer and their faces were open and amazed and though he couldn't think they were pleased to see _him_ , none of them looked angry either. Some of their shouts were cheers. 

Naegi said, "We mustn't lose hope."

Asahina had reached the first of the outsiders and they'd entered a spur-of-the-moment laughing dance around each other. 

Naegi said, "There's still a whole world out there."

Leon looked back to the sky and took another step forward. 

_Finis_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chihiro's birthday, March 14, falls on White Day. In Japan, Valentine's Day is mostly for girls to give gifts to boys, and boys are supposed to return the favor a month later. The In-Vitro Rose gift is favored by all the girls except Syo, plus Chihiro and Togami; it's "okay with" the other boys (Naegi's opinion is unknown). 
> 
> Asahina's introduction mentions she was recently selected to compete in the Olympics (presumably the Summer Olympics). Since it's two years later than Naegi thought at the time, it's likely those Olympics either took place or were cancelled on account of despair. Tokyo has hosted the games before and is slated to do it again in 2020. 
> 
> Regarding Syo's nicknames: the first kanji in Leon's name is usually read as "Rei."
> 
> Music and media referred to throughout, for the curious:
> 
> -"London Calling," _London Calling,_ The Clash  
>  - _Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols_ , who you'd expect  
> -"Little Lion Man," _Sigh No More,_ Mumford & Sons  
> -"That old English movie, something about oranges": _A Clockwork Orange_  
>  - _Damned Damned Damned_ , the Damned (who would've guessed?)
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fates Much Worse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2452535) by [Darkenning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkenning/pseuds/Darkenning)




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